


Love or spite or a ten dollar bet

by glovered



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Hallucinations, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-04-11
Updated: 2012-04-11
Packaged: 2017-11-03 11:00:44
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 27,518
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/380667
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/glovered/pseuds/glovered
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Lucifer tries to convince Sam that Dean wants him. Dick is on the rise.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

They're squatting again, following a lead. The house had been empty and dilapidated from the outside when they'd cruised by at four that afternoon, the front overrun by vines that had died struggling out of snowdrifts. It feels even more abandoned now, with Sam smashing in the handle of the back door with the butt of a shotgun, and Dean stepping after him into the moist kitchen that still echoes from the crash.

"Hello?" Sam calls, just to check that they're alone. 

Dean shoulders past and signals that he'll make the sweep of the upstairs.

Sam wanders the kitchen, opening cabinets. This part never gets less interesting; it's like it's Christmas even though it's October, and there might be some shitty presents mouldering in any one of the advent calendar doors, left over from holiday time last year. There're a few cans of beans cobbed with spiderwebs and Sam finds a fly swatter inexplicably in the fridge, whose door is ajar. Dust mats every remotely flat surface with an inch of itself and Sam's boots make trails alongside where Dean's have been.

"Clear," Dean shouts directly above him. Sam looks up and can see straight through a hole in the ceiling up to where his brother is peering down at him, two-by-fours and entrails of the house crosshatching his face but it's enough of a hole that Sam is blinded when Dean shines his flashlight down.

He shouts and then says, "I swear to god, Dean, I can still beat you up blind."

When Dean tromps down the stairs, though, he's got a hidden smirk on his face and it turns out there's a pull-out couch in the living room they can throw their sleeping bags down on. There might be fresh snow in the morning but it's comfortable enough inside now, this late at night, and besides, Dean had let Amy Pond live. Sam remembers how Dean had searched his gaze last week, when he'd begged him not to kill her, and how finally Dean had nodded, like he understood that this wasn't about Amy, it's about them. That fact alone is enough to curl around in Sam's chest, happiness or something like it, because Dean was letting part of Sam live in doing so, like he'd had the chance to cut out the ugly and freaky part of his brother but chose not to.

Sam lies awake for at least an hour after Dean's crashed out and drooling on his own hand under his cheek. Four months ago, Sam would have been lying here in the dark wracked with guilt, poking at the wall, like tapping a bug bite instead of itching, although the result is just going to be the same, eventually. Sam is lying here but now he remembers everything.

He remembers Hell. Cas died two weeks ago and Leviathans are possessing an unknown number of people. Bobby's house burnt to the ground. But Sam feels tentatively good. He hasn't figured out why just yet, but there's plenty time for introspection. He shifts a little closer to the dip in the mattress so he can feel Dean's breath on his face and digs idly at his palm whenever he opens his eyes to find Lucifer snugged in between them.

 

 

About fifty dead-end non-leads later, it's Saturday and it looks like this Leviathan hunt is going to come up fruitless for the one, major reason that there don't seem to be any Leviathans in town. 

"I'd think you'd be happy about that," Dean mutters, squeezing antibacterial ointment on the leaking, scraped-up skin of his forearm and then throwing back a slug of whiskey.

Sure, it's good news — especially since they don't know how to kill the bastards yet — and a few wasted days is par for the course in their long history of hunting, but Sam's angry for other reasons. While there are countless prehistoric sea creatures inhabiting hapless citizens in towns other than this one, mainly he's upset that Dean almost got himself thrown under a speeding car after being launched out a first storey window by a common ghost.

"Bitch was just feisty," Dean says.

Sam glowers. "Is that supposed to make me feel any better?"

Dean doesn't answer. Sam frowns and flips open his laptop. There's nothing that pisses him off like Dean and a near-death experience. It leaves him at a loss for what to do next. Dean is humming along to some song as Sam's imagination helpfully supplies some options, like the option of punching Dean in the face just to start a scuffle, giving Sam ample excuse to wrestle Dean onto the bed and then hug him until he breaks.

He thinks about doing it all the time. One hesitates to call it pining.

Outside, snow wafts down. Sam stares blankly at his homepage, "Search the Web," fingers resting on the keys. 

"Let's hang here for the weekend," Dean says, and it becomes writ into law by his will alone. "There're a couple of bars I want to hit up."

Sam just mutters, "Fine."

They've got nowhere to go anyway. Bobby's back at Rufus' old cabin in Montana, sending them word when any sign of Leviathans crops up and a firm order to stay out of his hair in the meantime.

Dean leaves after an hour of watching Sam from the corner of his eye. Sam feels exhausted and catches himself rubbing at his chest where he imagines his soul is lodged.

 

 

"Sam."

He swallows but his mouth is dry. 

"Sam. Sammy."

He comes back into wakefulness. He's on the fold-out couch, legs sweating in his sleeping bag. The window is covered with a plastic sheet but white light hits through it and his eyes feel gummy. Winter.

When he blinks further awake and rolls toward the voice, it's to find Dean stretched out next to him. They've slept like this every night for nearly a week, but now it's the middle of the day, which makes it strange. Taking the excuse of sleep, Sam lets his eyes fall closed again and he sinks towards the dip Dean is making in the mattress.

Distantly, he notes that Dean is watching him and not speaking. His very presence, laid out like this, watching Sam's face like he's reading it, means he's forgiven him, in spite of how Sam was pissy earlier that day, and difficult in ways he didn't need to be. That one, good thought is buoyant and comes to the surface of Sam's mind again and again, sleep sinking him like a stone until awareness of Dean brings him bobbing back up to the top of the lake.

He finally yawns and mumbles, with his eyes closed, "You're back." 

"I left but then I got bored," Dean tells him in even tones. "You've been out for hours."

"What happened to hitting the bars?"

"Fuck the bars, man." Sam takes note of this but then Dean is talking again, close and with measured calm. "I'm not mad, you know. About earlier."

"Oh." Sam uses the darkness of having his face smashed into the pillow to spill a little. It's that child logic, that feeling of if I can't see you, you don't exist, making the confession less lame. "Sometimes it's comforting to be pissed at you," he murmurs. Because he knows Dean will let him. When they get into arguments it feels like proof they've escaped all the major shit, enough to worry about stupid shit again, like whether or not Dean should have waited in the salt ring until Sam reloaded.

Dean laughs and rolls abruptly off the bed. "C'mon. You gonna sleep all day? Up and at 'em."

Sam finally opens his eyes and sees that Dean is peering out the window now, even though it's probably impossible to make the world out, the panes are so frosted over in sheets and veins. Sam unzips his sleeping bag and slides out to swing his bare feet onto the chilly floor. 

He gets his socks and boots on. He pulls on a green flannel shirt and buttons it up while Dean putters around the room, making noises Sam knows by heart. He disappears for a second but then sticks his head out the kitchen door seconds later.

"There's no food anywhere," Sam calls. "I think this place has been condemned for at least a year. I don't get why, though. Sure it's run down, but it's not a total dump."

Dean says, "Apparently if we were ever going to buy a place, it should be now."

Sam stills, his fingers fumbling the middle button. Dean wanders to the front door like Sam is just imagining that he'd dropped that bomb. He has always suspected what Dean wants, in an abstract, unstated-even-to-himself way, is to settle down but that he just doesn't know how. Hell, Sam's seen a hundred signs of just that. Now, he's finally brought it up, and Sam is going to address it. He gets his shirt fully buttoned and thinks about this novel thing called honesty he's been trying lately, ever since Dean called him out for not telling him about his hallucinations.

"You know, Dean," he starts. But then Dean's stepping closer and Sam almost goes cross-eyed looking down at him, and forgets to pursue it any farther.

"Here," Dean says, dropping keys into his right hand. "You drive."

They wander out the front and into the snow. Sam finds the car in a wintery haze. He feels lighter than air.

 

 

They drive to the coast, twenty minutes of icy roads and car-swaying winds be damned. Their conversation is minimal, made up of stretches and lulls, and when they pull to a stop, it's onto a lonely bluff where cliff meets sky. Dean's door creaks open and he's slamming it shut before Sam has even sat up straight.

Sam crunches through the sparse growth of scrubby plants in the slush while Dean looks down at the water. He shivers as Sam draws closer. His skin is kind of splotchy wherever Sam can see it: the backs of his hands purpled, his cheeks raw. He never did have the same body temperature as Sam, who had sometimes felt so hot in his own skin as a teenager that he would wedge the window open in the middle of a November night, only to have Dean slam it closed some time around five in the morning, clambering over him and grumpy.

Standing in the patches of snow and sandstone crumbled on this cliff, it's like they are the only two people who exist. For miles, at least, it's probably true. Sam watches Dean watch the water.

"You okay?" Sam finally asks.

"Me? Yeah, totally." Dean kicks a chunk of snow and it flips off the edge and is gone without so much as a distant splash. "Man, that's a long way down."

Sam grabs the back of his jacket, with a sudden and irrational fear. "Don't!"

Dean looks at him like he's crazy. Fair point, but still.

"Just," Sam says. "Just don't get so close to the edge."

Dean rolls his eyes, but he takes two giant steps back anyway. "You know, I always wondered if there were mermaids."

"Well, there are Leviathans," Sam points out. "Biblical whales that could eat the world. So I don't see why there can't be man-eating sea women, too."

"Must you always crush my dreams?"

Sam laughs and when he looks back at Dean, who is legitimately trembling now, he says, "C'mere."

"What?"

Sam keeps his hand stretched out, his left shoved into his pocket. "You're freezing cold, dude. Get over here."

He grabs Dean's hand, half-forcefully. The joking turns serious, though, and he curls their fingers together. "Your skin is like ice."

Dean shivers again and just looks at him. There's something naked there and Sam makes to draw back, drop Dean's hand, because it's suddenly clear that Dean knows. As in really knows, not just suspects or is brushing it off. It's clear as day, don't ask him how, but it makes Sam's heart jump into his throat. He takes a step away, but Dean follows, a step for a step.

"Don't," Sam stutters out. "You said you wouldn't get closer to the edge."

It feels like a dream, if a dream means hard sea wind whipping his hair all over and stinging the tips of his ears. Dreams have always meant Dean cradling his face, which is what happens next. He tugs Sam down so that their noses are brushing, and then it's a kiss. Sam gasps and dips into it. 

Dean's lips are cold, like the rest of him. Sam's head swims when he pulls away. Dean won't let him go far. Sam laughs nervously and considers running his thumb over Dean's bottom lip, thinking blearily how his mouth was just there, how this is real. He's not going complain about anything again, ever, for the rest of his life.

Dean looks blurry and smug so close up and when he tugs Sam more firmly so Sam stumbles against him, he says, "Sammy," kind of coyly.

"Um," Sam says. "I know this is not what I should be thinking about, but you are seriously cold. Are you—"

Actually, it doesn't sit right with him at all. He searches Dean's face, his steady gaze. Something is wrong.

"Sam!" he hears, but it's at the edge of his awareness, a mile away. He tips his head to listen but then drowns again when Dean says, "Hey, I'm right here." and drags him gently in for another kiss, with a chilly hand at the back of Sam's neck to hold him close in the wind.

"Sam!"

And then it's like the warehouse all over again, except this time around it's daylight, and Sam's half-hard in his jeans and abruptly about to tip over into the waves that are crashing against rocks five hundred feet below.

Sam sits down, ass hitting the dirt, snow soaking through the pockets of his jeans and turning the dirt into mud. Dean's still standing above him, smiling and sucking on his bottom lip as he watches Sam fumble backward. His expression is malicious and Sam doesn't trust him. Gravel and snow bite into Sam's hands and his shoulder blades knock the grill of the car, which, when he looks behind him, he finds doesn't belong to the Impala at all.

There are running footsteps and then Dean is standing with a foot on either side of Sam's knees, blocking the cliff and all the rest of the world from his line of sight. He grabs Sam's face like he had a few minutes before but now his palms are warm and calloused. Dean always drives with the heater on in weather like this, the windows down to let in the smell of the sea. How had that slipped his mind?

"The devil burns cold," Sam realizes aloud.

Dean is up close and breathing hard like he is the one who just had a close call. "Okay," he's saying. "Okay."

"Dean, I'm fine."

Dean moves to touch Sam's hair but then presses the hand against Sam's chest for a second instead, like he's telling them both to stay put. Then, he hauls Sam to his feet and propels him bodily back to the Impala.

"Get in." 

His voice is nothing more than a bark and Sam opens passenger side door, but not before flinging a look back to Lucifer, who spreads his hands as if to say, What? What are you complaining about now? one boot on the outcropping like a romantic figure at the crest of the cliff. His image warbles back to Dean's, momentarily, and Sam shouts and makes an abortive step forward as the copy takes a swan dive over the edge.

"Sam."

Sam knows it's a hallucination. He falls into the car and presses his thumb into his palm, and hard, but Lucifer's already gone, so the only comfort is the physical proof of being. Dean, his flesh and blood brother, has scooted next to him on the bench seat and is watching him warily, Sam can feel it. He locks the car door and clears his throat.

Dean lets out a long-held breath and slides to his side to put the car into drive.

"Okay," Dean says again, but to himself. He slings an arm over the back of the seat and pulls out carefully, off the shoulder of the road and onto the highway, pointed back the way they came.

 

 

They reach the ramshackle house. Dean spends the ride getting his voice back and Sam revisits at least fifty times the way his subconscious version of Lucifer playing his brother had let out a hitched sound when they'd kissed. It should not be as erotic as Sam is finding it, and it shouldn't be all he's focusing on, but he's more than a little freaked, and Dean's mouth opening up to his was a messed up version of something he's thought a lot about for a long time, so there you have it.

They go in through the front, all pretense of making themselves invisible to the neighbors or passersby shoved to the back burner. Sam clicks the door shut and locks them in, and holds steady when Dean flings a dagger at the wall at a seemingly random point.

"Son of a bitch!"

He is just trying to keep his head straight and not freak the fuck out. "Dean." He goes to retrieve the dagger. "You killed a fly."

"God dammit."

Dean goes to start packing their shit, bundling clothes into either bag because really it doesn't matter which. Meanwhile, Sam takes a seat at the table, sliding into calm because one of them has to.

"Well, we've noticed one thing," Dean says, finally breaking the silence. "Your cracked up self chooses some interesting rides. I mean, a minivan, Sammy?"

"What if I'd had multiple hallucinations?" he says. "I believe in seat belt safety." His voice comes out surprisingly steady despite having just made out with his brother, finally, although not really. He's always thought, if the time came, they'd both be fucked up together at least. 

"Right." Dean's watch ticks and so does the muscle in his jaw. Sam watches until Dean turns to catch him looking, at which point Sam glances away like it will fool either of them. Dean says, "I'm sticking by you, from now on. None of this running off for long, romantic drives crap."

"Sounds good to me."

"And Sam...." 

Despite the pauses, their conversation feels hard and fast and real after the dreamy quality of the drive to the coast, followed by the way Dean had curved against him, waves so loud Sam hadn't heard himself think. He thinks, he should have been able to tell.

"Sam."

Sam blinks. "What?"

"I'm going to just say this outright. You were totally making out with the devil, weren't you?"

Sam's knee hits the bottom of the table. "Dean!"

Dean points at him. "That is sick."

"It wasn't like that. It wasn't—"

Dean waits for him to continue but, however short a leap of logic it seems, Sam thankfully doesn't see the pieces fall into place on his face. He can't explain; the real explanation is by far more damning. Better for Dean to think this is just one more crazy thing, than to know the truth.

Dean's finished with their bags and he moves to sit at the table. "I'm not upset about earlier, by the way."

"I know," Sam says. He does. And it already feels like days ago.

"I mean, it's just, I know I freaked you out. Hell, I was freaked out, too. Run over in the road is not the way I want to go. There should at least be some skydiving involved. Maybe an audience—"

"Not helping, Dean."

"Right. It's just, we don't react well is all. I get why you were mad at me, but nothing good happens when we both—"

When we split up, Sam fills in. When you're pissed or I'm pissed and it all feels too big. "You're totally jealous," he says, mock serious.

"Shut up." Dean comes and sits next to him. "Let's watch TV or something."

Sam flips open the laptop. Dean cues up Lost, which they've been working through at a lukewarm pace.

"I miss Bobby's," Sam says, mid episode and deciding, unrelatedly, that he's never going to let Lucifer in again.

Dean groans, and knocks his ankle against Sam's under the table but then leaves them pressed together. "I miss Bobby's fridge."

"But not the bottom shelf."

"No, oh God no. I miss the top two shelves. That's a given. Why would you even bring that up?"

And they're back.

 

 

That was way back when, and this is now.

He's known for months that Dean killed Amy. He's let Lucifer in again, despite his best thumb pressing and silent treatment. And Bobby— And Sam also extracted a promise from Dean, that he'd try his damnedest not to get killed...but here they are. It's a Monday night, and Dean almost breaks that promise.

To be fair, it's both of them, so Sam getting pissed at Dean would be a double standard. They're in Michigan and it's too damn cold to be dripping in ectoplasm in the middle of the night, but it was a poltergeist and the explosion was epic when they wasted it. The only reason there isn't the buzz of a hunt put behind them is that the one poltergeist they were hunting turned out to be two poltergeists and, thus, he and Dean had to book it from the graveyard to fight another day.

Sam spends the entirety of the ride back to the motel in a reserved sort of calm. He's wearing a shirt that is soaked through with quickly solidifying slime, and that is enough for the moment.

"Eugh," Dean says, which just about sums things up. His fingers slip around on the steering wheel as he swings the car into the motel lot, jerking it into park in a screech of unfamiliar brakes. They get out and squelch gingerly up to the orange door, room number six under the one light and ecto between their toes.

Sam leans against the latticework, next to the flower box of dead tulip stalks while Dean tries to open the door and mutters something about disgusting and their lives and crap jobs in the middle of nowhere.

Sam tries to wipe enough black, snot-looking stuff off of himself that it doesn't crust over any vital airways.

"I mean, there is—" Dean says, hand slipping from the handle for the fifth time. "Everywhere. I mean— I think I'm gonna be sick."

"Everywhere?" He watches greyish goop roll off of Dean's cheek.

"I mean, in my clothes, for sure...but in my nose? In my ears?" He sticks a finger in there. "Yes. Affirmative."

Sam turns out a pocket. Goop. "And there's a lot of it. If this wasn't so disgusting I might actually take a picture. But I don't want to touch my phone right now."

"Like hell you will. Some things are better left behind us."

"Like the—"

"Don't even, Sam. Don't even bring that up."

He makes way for Sam to step up and try the door. Sam fumbles the keys and gets ahold of the handle with the tail of his shirt and turns it.

They're in, and when the door clicks shut, they strip their clothes off carefully into a garbage bag, grabbing hems and belt loops with two fingers even though they're covered in the stuff, Sam one-handed because, despite nearly being thrown into a ravine, the part of him that hurts most is a sprained wrist, his fingers rubbery feeling and his extremities numb with cold.

He nods to the trash bag and gives Dean a look that means laundry and says, "Tomorrow."

He tosses the bag into a corner and then slicks some goop off his chest, onto the carpet.

"You mean after we get the next one? Or you could just—"

"Like hell I'm washing those alone." Sam's about to continue the thought when he feels something. He wrinkles his nose and shifts on his feet. "Uh, Dean?"

Dean is down to his black boxer briefs, his back to Sam and gleaming with slime. "Huh?" he asks, half bent over and going through a duffel.

"This stuff...." Sam runs a finger down his arm, leaving a biting trail. "Is it...stinging at all? Do you feel that?"

Dean pauses his rummaging, straightens to meet Sam's eyes, and then beats it to the bathroom. Sam rushes in after him.

They barely wait for the water to warm up, bouncing on the balls of their feet. If it's a matter of getting stinging, monster snot off of themselves as quickly as possible, there is no question about whether to share a shower. They live dangerous lives; this sort of thing happens.

Sam says, holding his arms away from his body as if it will help, "Remember that guy—"

"Braxton," Dean supplies.

"Yeah."

They share a tense, uncomfortable look because enough said, they both know the story. Braxton had ignored some unusual stinging after a hunt, because what was a minor annoyance when he also had a broken leg? Ignoring it had resulted in temporary blindness. So yeah, Sam and Dean get their underwear off and jump in before the water's hot.

Dean shoulders Sam out of the way to get under the water as soon as possible, and then drags him back under it, like he can't decide which of them to save first. Sam feels jumpy and dramatic, on the edge of exhaustion but suddenly in panic mode again, like when the poltergeist had swooped at his head and he'd stumbled back over the edge of the minor cliff and only barely grabbed a root.

They squirt liberal amounts of shampoo on their hands and start rubbing it all over their bodies, and soon the water has heated to a temperature that is almost unbearable, and in under a minute the stall smells like putrid goo and off-brand coconut. The stuff is somewhat water soluble and it slicks off to pool at their feet, which are close on the tile and sickly yellow under the bathroom neons.

Dean goes for full-on macho at times like these, male posturing inversely proportional to the amount of clothing he's wearing. Always has. He turns away from Sam, once the majority of ecto has slithered down the drain, and demands, loudly and like a mafia henchman, "Man, get that shit off my back."

Sam rolls his eyes and squeezes out more shampoo, but on a motel washcloth this time. He slaps it on the back of Dean's neck and then applies pressure, the skin beaded over with water droplets like it's covered in olive oil. He swipes across Dean's shoulders and then holds the washcloth under the shower head, rings out the excess, and lathers it against Dean's shoulders again. The suds go normal-colored where they wash away, following the path Sam makes down the sharp jut of Dean's shoulder blades and the tight curve of his waist. 

Dean keeps a running commentary. "The way you somersaulted under the thing when it came at you...that was some seriously impressive acrobatics. Of course, didn't stop you from breaking your wrist—"

"It doesn't hurt that bad," Sam says.

He takes the washcloth and washes his own chest, legs, and arms, feeling cleaner by the second, the water too hot, opening his pores. Then, he slaps the washcloth over Dean's shoulder and leaves it there so he can finish. 

He shoves open the shower door and reaches to jimmy the bathroom window ajar to let some of the possibly noxious steam out, feeling paranoid. Then, he shuts the door and lists against the shower wall, feeling wrung out and warm, his fingers pruning.

Dean calls him dude three times in the same sentence while he holds a conversation with Sam's back, loud and jarring, to cement this with a shade of normalcy. Sam listens to him with his forehead resting against the cold grit of the tiles, hears the squirting of shampoo and the slipping sounds of their feet.

Dean sputters out water close and says, "Here."

Sam starts as the washcloth is slapped against his skin. He can feel Dean's hand through the thing as he rubs it around between his shoulder blades and down the dip of his spine. Sam adjusts his stance and offers his lower back by a fraction of an inch, almost imperceptibly so, but Dean notices, and swipes there, as well.

"You know," he says. "You know, that last day. When we were staking out that turducken lab."

"Yeah?" Sam thinks about that day all the time.

"He said he'd been to enough funerals." Dean mumbles, "Wish we could have bought him a condo or something. Too little, too late, though."

"Yeah."

They've just spent four weeks in a state of shock that is profound, and eight after that, too. They've gone from staring at the wall to putting clues up on said wall. They've gone from ducking each others' glances to being able to look one another in the face again. Dean touches his back.

"Hey."

"Mm." It's all Sam can muster. He didn't realize, but he is falling asleep against the wall with hot rain on his shoulders.

Dean has his fingertips trailing the bumps of Sam's spine, his hands smoothing over Sam's shoulders like he's forgotten he's doing it. "You think we can get Dick?" 

There's a loud bark of laughter from outside the stall which makes Sam jerk, before realizing it's just Lucifer, laughing like a five-year-old at what Dean could have meant.

Sam covers the startle with a cough, and then says, "I think we have to try. For Bobby. We owe it to him."

"Yeah."

"There's that field. We should call Frank and check it out."

Dean drops the washcloth and says, "You're right. In the morning, though. We'll get the second poltergeist and then we'll call Frank." His hand flattens on Sam's shoulder again, rough palm to skin and careful-feeling, at odds with his tone. "You're falling asleep. Out." 

They stumble out of the shower, skin going cold, and wrap tiny motel towels around their waists and get dressed in silence. Sam finds his flannel PJ pants, his eyes half-closed because maybe if he manages to stay in this stupor, body relaxed from water and heat and proximity, maybe it will be easy to fall asleep. He tugs a t-shirt over his head that goes instantly damp and watches out of the corner of his eye as Dean pulls on jeans and then takes a slug of whiskey before lying on the covers. Sam gets in his own bed, on his front under the sheets.

Tomorrow, they'll figure out what to do about Dick. They're hopelessly behind, there are Leviathans to hunt down, they've got work to do. It's time to get back in the game, Sam thinks, arm snaking under his pillow to loosely grip the knife. There's undoubtedly a grander plan that he and Dean are missing which could mean the end of the known world, and it's the three month anniversary tonight— one week, two weeks, twelve weeks later, after Bobby was shot in the head and died in that hospital bed, the day after someone else's Thanksgiving. 

 

 

The planning continues the next evening, in a hole. Well, Sam's in it, to be more precise, almost six feet down with a shovel's shaft recallousing old rough spots on the joints of his fingers. He wipes sweat from his forehead with his shoulder. He is digging up a grave.

"You know," Lucifer tells him, and Sam starts, a horror that never goes dull blooming in his gut. "Just because it was me playing quarterback to your kicker months back, and Dean was out on the bench, it doesn't mean that he isn't leading the charge here."

Sam wedges the shovel into the cold dirt at his feet and flings another pile over the side, hearing it land with a soft pat on the grass above. The second poltergeist is nowhere to be seen, because they came in prepared this time, with markings they burnt in the grass to trap the spirit and a spell to hold it while they get to its corpse. There aren't shortcuts for everything in life, but there is for this.

"What?" he huffs.

"Dean," Lucifer says. "The guy with hair a middling color, short to your tall, baby greens to die for. You know— angsty male-model type."

"Uh, yes. But I don't understand the football analogy."

"Your brother. You're all messed up over him – fantasizing about that harlequin kiss on the cliff and repressing it in turn – and all the while he's been trying to get in your pants."

Sam shakes his head and keeps digging, because that's old lies, from back in the pit. While it's true he has added the twenty seconds of false bliss to the list of things he thinks about often, and while it's true Dean has always been a little in love with him, the fact like a point of pride between them not able to be parsed by words or third parties— it's just not like that, not really.

He looks away from Lucifer's pouting face, up topside where Dean is calling Frank.

"Yeah, hey. It's Dean." There's a pause, then Dean gestures at nothing and says into the phone, "Dean-Dean. You know, as in Bobby's friend?"

When Sam looks back, Lucifer is gone. Probably not for long. He gets full-body goosebumps. It's not like before, when he'd told Bobby in the van the day of the shooting, it's the best case scenario, given the circumstances. Because then, he'd believed it. 

He clears away an arbitrary inch of dirt off the coffin, and then slams the top with the flat of his shovel so the wood breaks like the shell of an egg.

Up there, his brother says, "We've gone over this shit, Frank. What? Yeah, yeah I'll hold while you do a background check on this number. If it helps, we're at the Redwing Motel. 'We' who? Me and Sam. Sam. My freaking brother?"

Dean looks down and rolls his eyes at Sam, who shrugs a shoulder in sympathy and turns to pry the splinters away from the nails.

But before he can, the coffin slats jiggle like someone is alive or undead inside, and a pounding starts up. Sam watches, warily, shovel at the ready. 

The pounding goes on, then the planks start to pry themselves up as Sam waits, and then there is Lucifer. He clambers up, wiping his hands on his jeans, to resume their conversation.

"I was just dying to get out. As I was saying...I'm your subconscious, kid. I don't make this shit up, I just jimmy the clues together from that scrambled memory of yours and see where they fit. Conclusion: Dean wants you. You don't let yourself see. You just shove it all deep so you don't have to deal. But newsflash, Sammy—" 

Sam nods to the exhumed corpse, which is dried out and sad-looking. "Do you mind?"

Lucifer holds up his hands and steps off of its chest. "Fine. Fine by me. Go right ahead, put on a show. Your competence only fuels the flames of his lust."

"Just stop," Sam says, even as he feels a lurch in his chest region.

"What?" Dean calls down.

"Nothing." Sam leans against the grave wall, wet with sweat and his shoulder muscles screaming, and listens to Dean go back to his call.

"Look, we've got issues. I need you to get into the security cameras at that field we went to in Wisconsin and tell me what's up with the construction. Me and Sam are thinking about doing some recon. Okay, an hour's good. Call me back in an hour."

Sam addresses Lucifer in an undertone, "So, what? You egging me on? Playing matchmaker?"

Dean sounds impatient. "I'm the paranoid bastard? I guess it takes one to know one. All I'm saying is, I took a nap in your truck and woke up, day and a half later and my brother drugged and chained to a chair two states over. I'd say I've got a right to a healthy dose of skepticism."

Lucifer taps his bottom lip, and answers Sam. "Nice, but no."

"What then?" Sam is at a loss.

"I'm bored in here! I've got all the time in the world to push at your bruises. And remember what we've learned, Sam? The worst torture is hope. Because even if it were true...."

The unspoken hangs there between them, and Sam hears it because this entire thing is in his head: Even if it were true that Dean wants you like that, you'd never have the balls.

Sam grits his teeth against a response. The younger sibling in him wants to take the dare, but then he remembers what's real and presses his thumb into his palm in a scrape of blunt nails until Lucifer shimmers, then disappears.

Dean bends over the hole, hands on his knees. "You done making out down there?"

Sam frowns. "We're not making out! Oh my god, Dean, of course not. I told you before." 

Dean looks massively disturbed. "I meant, the corpse. That was a joke."

"We're not making out," Sam says, weakly.

"Sammy. Are you...."

Sam doesn't argue that he's fine. He looks to his feet where old man Simmons' teeth are jutting out the rotting flesh of his bottom lip, and then glances up at Dean, who drops the subject and offers him an arm up. Sam's back rubs roots and chunks of wet soil from the grave wall. He feels the grit of dirt slide under his fingers where they press into Dean's forearm, and then he's on his knees in the grass and they aren't touching anymore, and then he stands and feels nothing but the breeze on his skin, not even a heartbeat.

He grabs the bottle of lighter fluid. He squirts it liberally into the gaping hole as Dean sets a book of matches aflame and says, "Sayonara, mother fu—"

The corpse goes up with a whoosh.

 

 

Frank does call back, but not before midnight. Dean's already down half a bottle of cheap whiskey, watching telenovelas, and Sam's stretched out one motel bed over, messing around with his laptop. Dean has already gotten up in arms once tonight about Sam supposedly giving him looks over the top of it every time he knocks back another gulp. It's an argument which mainly consisted of Dean pointing at him and saying, "Dude." and Sam muttering, "Hey, do what you want." but sneaking glances when he looked away.

Now, Dean is still watching TV and Sam is trying and somewhat failing not to miss his old computer, which had, true, been getting slow, but. This one has Windows Vista, god knows why. It's a mess.

Relatedly, Dean's a mess. Sam's a mess, too. That's allowed, but that fact doesn't make it livable. Dean takes another drink, and it's like a he's a caricature of an alcoholic, in some show Sam would never give the time of day. He thinks, Dean must know what he's doing. He wants to believe Dean can just decide to stop, but he knows it's not that easy. He knows it, and he knows that Dean doesn't owe him anything, but damn if Sam's going to let him live the next however many years of his life unconscious. 

Dean glances over at him during the commercials, and says, breaking the quiet, "You still crying over that thing?"

Sam says, "Well, there's a lot to be said for a laptop that isn't half-full of pictures of your face."

"Sometimes a guy needs a mirror. Besides, you love my face. It's like your face, only different."

"Not really."

"Yeah really—" The phone rings. Dean clicks 'talk' and says, "Yeah. Yes, it's still Dean. Winchester. I'm serious, man. Fine, I'll hold." He leans back against the headboard and grumbles, "We all need to come up with a secret password or something." 

Sam half-listens to the ensuing conversation, knowing Dean will give him the low-down afterward. It's like having a secretary. A very pretty, very surly secretary, who knows Sam's life inside out and is drunk every day before noon.

When the conversation is over, Dean turns to him. "So, that field...good call. There's a tent on the property, now, and there've been weekly gatherings."

"Any sign of Dick?"

"Yep. The limo's made an appearance at every one of these shindigs, the last few Fridays. About a hundred people each time."

"Well, looks like we've got plans this weekend."

"Taking me out?" Dean asks, with the casual air of one who is used to making passes at his brother. "Fucking finally."

Sam keeps his eyes on the screen and answers mildly, "To hang out with monsters who want to eat you alive? Yeah, I'll take you out."

"You know, sometimes I can't decide if you want to kill me or impress me." He rolls off the bed and steps into the bathroom. "Mixed messages, Sammy."

The door shuts with a click and a hand hits Sam smack in the face.

He scoots to the edge of the mattress and gets an elbow to the ribs this time, so he clicks his laptop shut and stands. He walks across the room and puts it on the table, and then turns and pins Lucifer with a look.

"Sharing is caring," Lucifer tells him, spread eagle on his back on Sam's bed. 

"Come on," Sam mutters, pressing his palm. "Leave."

Lucifer's been shadowing them all day.

"Hey, Sam?" Lucifer asks the ceiling. "Remember how I used to pull your darkest fears out of you and spin them into gold to rock you to sleep?"

"That's...not exactly how it happened."

"It was magical."

Sam paces for a time, then stops at an arbitrary spot of carpet. "Let's have a truce," he offers.

Lucifer looks only fleetingly interested before he flings the TV remote.

Sam sidesteps, easily, and says, "Look, we've established I can never do the palm thing all night, so I'm offering you an arrangement." He always comes back to the bargaining stage, like maybe Lucifer will take what he's offering. It's just that, he feels like he hasn't slept in weeks. Lucifer's been hanging around, sometimes yelling directly into his ear like a warning horn in the fog. Sam says, "Let's agree that you can't bug me between the hours of one and five. Just four hours of sleep, that's all I ask. After that, I'll hang out, whatever. Whatever you want."

"Whatever I want?"

"Well, within reason."

"It's cute when you try to establish boundaries. You and I both know, we don't have any."

The second bed is empty and rumpled and Sam wonders if he can crawl in and make Dean sleep with Satan instead. It's not like he'd notice.

"Seriously, though—"

The bathroom door opens, then, and Dean heads over to his bed and flops down onto the covers.

"How'd the remote get over there? Huh, weird. Could you toss it to me?"

Sam does. Dean flips through channels and Sam stands stuck in the middle of the room. Now that he can't lie down, he really wants to.

Finally, he settles for taking a seat at the edge of his bed. He roughs his palm against the inseam of his jeans and Lucifer shimmers off for a second in the corner of his eye, only to reappear when his attention wanders.

"You're right," Lucifer tells him. "I can do this all night."

The room begins to sway like they're holed up in the bowels of a ship, and Sam stares at the TV like it's a flickering, fixed point on the horizon. Dean punches his pillows into a better shape and drinks from a glass and says something about a girl in this gritty rerun of some show they've landed on. The windows rattle like a train's passing and the laptop shudders right off the table to crack open on the carpet.

The windows blow in and shards explode to rain down in a tinkling of glass. On reflex, Sam shields the side of his face, but covers up the motion, pretending to rub at his hairline.

"You gonna get into bed, Sammy?" his brother and Lucifer say in creepy unison.

"Sam."

Sam flinches. "Yeah."

The room goes still and the window is a smooth pane of reflection that shows the two beds and only the two of them. There's no sheen of glass dust over old carpet, glistening under the sodium lighting, there's no quiet crumbling of ceiling plaster. His new computer is closed and intact on the table, near a water glass and a pen that would have fallen had there really been an earthquake or a midnight train passing in the parking lot.

"There is seriously nothing on," Dean mutters. He zaps the TV off, hanging the room with silence.

Sam looks back behind him, where Lucifer is dragging his arms up and down the covers. It's pulled directly from Sam's memories, so that he shivers thinking about how, in just about anywhere, USA, come winter, Dean used to stuff snow down the neck of Sam's ratty jacket until he stopped ducking away and retaliated, jumping on Dean's back and tumbling them into prime snow angel position. Sam is getting goosebumps down his arms just remembering the crunch of snow beneath his head and back, just thinking about it.

"I'm getting a little cold here," he says.

Lucifer says, "Of course you are. I have access to anything in this jumble of repression and good intentions."

"Yeah?" Dean prompts. "So get into bed."

Sam sits with his hands dangling between his knees for a good ten seconds before saying, "I need to sleep in yours."

He turns to look Dean in the eye and Dean looks back, letting that one sit.

Sam waits. He stares Dean down like he's issuing a challenge, offering no explanation but knowing Dean will eventually decide that it must be for a good reason. Let Dean rationalize it for the both of them.

Sure enough, Dean finally shrugs. Then, he shoves over on the bed instead of switching to the other one so that Sam can have his. Well.

Sam sees, belatedly, that he could have been more clear about what he meant, but he gets in. He shuts his eyes and waits until he feels Dean get under the covers as well, instead of on top.

"I'm impressed," Lucifer starts to croon, but Sam presses his thumb into his palm and that bed goes temporarily silent.

Dean tenses next to him, but he doesn't call Sam out. He reaches over to turn off the light.

It's quiet for a time. Then, the heater hums to life with a click, covering the snow silence on the other side of the wall, but does nothing for the quiet that's thinning the air in bed, between them in the dark. This is not something they do. Pull-out couches are one thing, but there are boundaries, unspoken and barbed. Things are careful-quiet and Sam is considering climbing back into the other bed and spooning with Lucifer when Dean reaches over and grabs his hand, hard.

"Ow," Sam says, in measured tones.

Dean squeezes his fingers tighter.

"Ow," Sam says again, rolling toward him. "That hurts."

He knees him a little, an irritated nudge because he isn't going to just sit there and take this. He feels Dean's arm tense like he's about to do something full-body, get out of the bed or maybe something else, so Sam twists their hands preemptively so that he's grabbing Dean's hand right back, crushing Dean's pointer and pinky fingers together uncomfortably, their thumbs fighting for dominance.

"So, what's up?" he asks.

Dean's tone is almost bored when he gets Sam's thumb pinned. "Helped, didn't it?"

Sam tries to pull away but Dean snickers and holds on. Sam groans and says, "You're fucking annoying."

"I'm not sharing a bed with that douchebag," Dean tells him, unaware that sometimes Lucifer still shares his face.

"He's in the other bed," Sam says, but then amends, because by squinting he can see the bed next to them is just empty sheets. "Well, was."

"See?"

He just knocks his knee against Dean's so that both of them wince, and then stolidly pulls away and grabs a pillow as his own.

"I can beat up on you, any time you want," Dean says. "I'd do that, for you."

"You're a bad person," Sam tells him.


	2. Chapter 2

It isn't until lunch the next day, only a couple cherry tomatoes remaining of his salad and Dean sucking french fry salt off his fingers across the table to the background sounds of middle America in the afternoon, that Sam sees their situation with a break of clarity. They are going to get killed.

Here's his reasoning: Just a few years back, he and Dean used to go into each run-of-the-mill salt and burn with sawed offs and days' worth of hefty research under their belts. But that changed. Just because they've fought angels and won, and just because they've survived Hell to some extent, they think they can't be taken down. Hell, just a few days back, Sam almost took a nose dive into a forest ravine because they've lost perspective. And now, they're heading into a massacre that they haven't even thought twice about.

He says, "Dean...we need backup."

Dean looks up from his endeavors. "Sam, there is no backup." He says it, not like one disenchanted with the idea of Santa Clause or the Easter Bunny, but in the tones of someone who has tried to get help, and always gotten 'no.'

"No," Sam says. "Enough with the jaded crap. It might be true sometimes, and it might be true now, but we haven't even tried. And not trying is going to get one of us killed." He sets his jaw. "We're calling that witch guy."

Dean stares at him. "Don? Don Stark?"

"Yes."

Dean leans forward and says in a voice that is calling Sam shortsighted, "Crazy, married to crazy, 16th century, Romanian witch man? Who only saved us because he felt like it and has no reason to help us now?"

"He can stun Leviathans. That might be useful if there are a hundred of them."

"Yeah, he can. But he's not going to."

"Look, Dean. When it's a choice between heading in barely armed and going in with some sort of protection, you take the protection."

"Sam—"

It's a good idea, he knows it. "The last time we faced off against Leviathans, we lost. And you said you'd try not to get killed."

If there's one thing that Dean is no match for, it's awkward silences. Sam makes space for one now. He stares Dean down until Dean waves him off.

"All right. But you're calling. I'm sick of this asking for favors crap." And Dean goes back to his fries.

Sam looks Don's office up online when they're back at the motel, and holds the phone to his ear as Dean throws himself onto the bed.

"Hello, Don Stark's office," a perky voice answers. It sounds like someone who might make cupcakes with homemade frosting.

"Hi," he says. "I'd like to speak to Don."

"I'm sorry, Mr. Stark is in a meeting. Can I arrange a time for him to call you?"

"I'm actually with the FBI? My partner and I were investigating—"

"Sam!"

"Hey, Jenny. You still work there."

"As if I'd give up my job," she says.

Sam is somewhat concerned that biting into a bleeding heart and finding out your boss's wife had it out for you hasn't deterred her, but he pushes on. "Yeah, hey, so we need to talk to Don. It's sort of urgent."

"Of course, I'll transfer you on through."

"Thanks."

While Sam's convincing Don to arrange for taking the end of the week off work, book an early flight, and rent a car, all for the purpose of staking out a field, the table cracks in half. He ignores it. He pushes his chair back and keeps talking.

"What's in it for you?" Sam repeats into the phone when Don, harried sounding, asks the most obvious question. "Well, to be honest, not much. Future safety of your town? For all we know they're already there. I'm asking you, Don— Yes. Yes, in the future it will be useful to you to have— Okay. Right. Yeah. When should you meet us? Well...." Dean looks up from where he's sharpening a knife and holds Sam's gaze. Sam says into the phone, "How fast can you be there?"

After that, he makes one more call.

"Sheriff Mills? Yeah, hi—" He laughs. "It's good to hear your voice, too. Yeah, no, just calling because we needed some information. Is there any way you could look something up for me in one of Bobby's old books? That big red one— No, you don't need to bring it this way, we're heading over to Wisconsin— Where are we heading? Near Summit Lake." He fiddles with his pen. "But we're just going to check out the field I told you about, nothing you need to worry about— Well, yeah, actually pretty dangerous but— No, you don't have to— Sheriff? Jody?"

At the termination of the call, Dean looks up again from his knife. "That sounded like it went well."

Sam clicks his phone off and places it carefully on the now-intact table. "They'll be there tomorrow by five."

 

 

He and Dean go to a grocery store after dinner to stock up. There's light snow as they're walking in from the parking lot, but that melts as soon as it hits the asphalt. Sam feels grounded, ever since last night really. They're picking up the trail again, except this time around they've got backup and they might just track down a dick.

The automatic doors slide open, and inside is a warmth of bread smells and circulated air. Everything is yellows and red, the wild creaking of shopping carts, and the gaudy pink of five-day-old Valentine's candy piled high in display racks.

"Civilization," he says, brushing snowflakes from his hair.

Dean points, "Fritos."

Fritos mean whipped cream cheese and a jar of salsa, which means a couple more bags of things you stick your hand in until Sam says, "We're not at a gas station." 

Dean makes a "hmph" sound and doesn't point out how Sam grabs an energy bar when they pass by force of habit. When they get to the cleaning supplies, they stare at the detergents and powders.

Sam says, "Maybe we should just get a truck with a hose."

"Know how hard it is to get one of those?" He asks, then nods to a woman next to them who is deciding between brands. He and Sam stick out like sore thumbs, over six feet tall and wearing old jackets, considering fabric softeners. He tells Sam, "Hard."

True. "I guess we're not going to have to kill that many of them," Sam says. "Much as they should be wiped from the face of the Earth."

"Ants," Dean tells the woman, whose look goes from sidelong to sympathetic. "On the counter. In the sugar, cereal, you name it."

They wait for her to pass.

Sam pulls a few bottles off the shelf, and Dean says, "You got it. I'm gonna get some other stuff."

Sam watches him leave. He's probably making a beeline for the alcohol aisle. If Lucifer were here, deciding between lavender or spring breeze, he would say alcohol's like the other woman in this equation, that alcohol has gone and replaced Sam and now Sam's jealous. Sam would ignore him but know in his gut that it was true.

He heads to the other side of the store, twenty aisles over and scanning the shelves for sandwich materials. He makes way for elderly women who are either particularly clumsy or especially vicious, nearly running him over with their carts, while he thinks about his brother. How the major red flag isn't just that he's drinking, it's that he's not there half the time, like he's walking dead. Sam hasn't figured out what to do about it yet, and it's pissing him off.

Dean finds him sometime later by the firewood, thinking darkly about interventions he'd promised not to make. "Salt makes you fat."

"I'll try to remember that," Sam says, and drops the basket which is, in fact, loaded to the brim with industrial sized salt canisters. He nods to the lighter fluid. "How many do you think?"

"Five? I don't know. It's not like we'll be burning these guys."

"Yeah." He glances over at Dean's basket. He's got three handles of Jack, a six pack of a local microbrew under one arm, and a skin mag, even though Sam hasn't seen him look at porn that wasn't hentai in months.

"Beer's for you," Dean says, and heads to the register.

Back at the motel, Dean disengages. He works his way steadily through three quarters of a handle of whiskey and Sam doesn't say anything about it. He promised not to, and at the time he'd meant it, headlights of oncoming cars flashing over Dean's face and Sam thinking please, please let him live. But now he works through the six pack while watching three episodes of the Good Wife, and doesn't remember anything about them after the fact because Dean is just drinking, and there's a ring on the cover of Busty Asian Beauties from where Dean's using the magazine as a coaster.

He gets ready for bed, brushing his teeth slowly and flossing until his gums bleed a little, spitting, and rinsing out his mouth. By the time he's done, he has come to a decision. He thinks, if there's one thing he knows helps him when he's falling to pieces, is when Dean is there to ground him, rather than tiptoeing around him like he's broken. He needs Dean to pull him out of his own head sometimes, so maybe there's a way to return the favor.

He steps back into the room. He pulls off his shirt and stretches a rumpled v-neck over his head and changes his socks, knowing that without his brother, he would have been lost, there's no way around it.

Dean finally looks at Sam with partial interest when he starts for Dean's bed instead of his own. He stops by the foot of the mattress and looks at the extra pillow and then back to Dean meaningfully. Dean is now arching an eyebrow at him, waiting. Sam's willing to put up with awkwardness if it means getting in under Dean's dull of alcohol, and this is how to do it.

"Yeah?" asks Dean, reading Sam's expression if not his real intent.

"It worked last night," Sam says.

"But he's not here, now?"

Sam glances around the room on reflex. Lucifer's nowhere to be seen. He says, "No."

"The whole idea gives me the creeps, man."

"Yeah, you're telling me." His skin crawls just thinking about it.

He feels somewhat guilty for using Dean's worry like this, but then Dean stands and says, "You know what, actually...."

He grabs the edge of Sam's mattress, and calmly shoves it over onto its side. He leans it up against the wall and then turns and gets back into his own bed.

"There."

"Good plan," Sam says, steady.

"Now, tell him to sleep in the car."

"Stop being a jerk, Dean."

Dean tugs the ball cord to shut off the lamp, bedside. Sam waits for a couple seconds before following him in. He gets under the covers and rolls onto his stomach, warming up. He waits for Dean's hand to slide toward his over the sheets, but Dean's turned away from him, back big and dark a foot away.

"Dude," Sam says.

Dean turns readily, like he had been waiting. From this close, Sam can smell the whiskey on his hot breath when Dean says, "Haven't you ever heard of—"

"Beauty sleep, yeah yeah. Just—" he fumbles out for Dean's hand, where he knows it will be, near his face.

Dean's breath picks up, Sam can feel it on his own mouth, and it should be gross but it's Dean, and it's already so fucked up that this familiarity is something he can admit to love. He loves Dean for not asking, too, not examining this too closely. The trust is like a testament to something great. He gets Dean's hand in his, hot and real.

"Poking my eye out is so the opposite of beauty sleep," Dean says. But he presses his thumb into Sam's palm, gamely, until Sam squeezes back thinking, stone number one. 

"You doing okay?" Dean asks, quieter.

"I'm fine. Stop asking." Sam has his eyes open still. And now, the real question: "You?"

"Eh, you know me."

Sam presses his blunt nails into Dean's palm, and lets their fingers entangle. Dean sighs, sounding put upon, but it comes out on a yawn. "Grabby bastard."

 

 

Dean's whistling the next morning is the first thing Sam hears. The next is, "Gonna see your girlfriend today," and, while Sam is feigning sleep with his nose pressed into the warm pillowcase, "I know you're awake," and "Get up, it's like two in the afternoon."

That gets Sam to open his eyes. "What?"

Dean's shoving his feet into his boots at the table, American cheese slice wrappers piled at his elbow like the testament to a breakfast, although not a healthy one. "I'm just kidding," he says. He finishes a beer and then burps.

Sam pulls the pillow over his head. Last night he's pretty sure they fell asleep holding hands, after a few bonecrushing minutes. He also has a half memory that might be the real thing, of waking up in the dark on his front still, with Dean's face in his neck and their arms crooked together between them. He thinks maybe Dean said his name, like he'd felt Sam wake up.

But it could be a dream. It could have been Lucifer, painting a pretty picture to hang Sam with, like the cliff months back, like the feel of Dean's mouth parting under his. Sam let him in, and now he has to deal. Lucifer's got all of Sam's marbles to play in like his head's a ball pit attached to the astrojump. Speaking of, it's just after Valentine's Day, and Dean has had the rainbow slinky bumping around in the backseat along with the rest of their stuff since Sam stole it for him.

"It's like a plastic, expandable expression of love," says Lucifer from where he's seated next to Dean, when Sam finally sits up. "But what you have...it's more than that."

"What could be more than that?" Sam might wonder this out loud, or just in his head.

Lucifer looks disappointed in him. "Love is a tool, Sam, not the endgame. It's your intent that determines how it's used, and how it's used reveals the user's intent."

Well.

Lucifer looks at him with dead eyes and says, "Just watch him some time. You'll see."

There's a shadow on the wall and it's Dean's, and when Sam looks at the table again, Lucifer's gone, leaving a wooden chair that's scraped five inches across the carpet like someone had actually been sitting there. Dean shoves it out of the way when he steps over to their bags.

"You ready to head out?" He turns, looking refreshed, and Sam attributes this to his half-baked plan of essentially holding Dean until he's grounded. "Sam?"

Sam swallows and nods. "Yeah, sure."

Once they get up and out, the drive into Wisconsin is half a day of quiet fields and bad cell reception. It's the tip of March, the idea of spring is evident in tepid sunlight. Frost is melting off the long grasses. Dean whistles some more as they drive, tapping his fingers against the steering wheel in random bursts like rainfall and smiles over at Sam at least twice, for no spoken reason whatsoever. Sam jams his legs in the most comfortable position in the footwell of their tiny car and can't find it in himself to feel unhappy.

And when they get out at a gas station, it's like salvation on his limbs. He tumbles out of the car and groans as he stretches his legs for the first time in hours, pulling his hands behind himself to get his back, too. Today is a good day. He jumps when Dean gets him in the side with an easy elbow jab on the way to the pump, and he sidesteps just as easily to head into the minimart.

Wandering the aisles, he picks up some more lighter fluid, like always, and a six-pack of espresso double shots, along with sunflower seeds for himself and a couple Slim Jims for Dean. 

He heads out and the world smells like gasoline and cold sunshine. He puts the drinks through the backseat window and says, "Heads up."

Dean lets the pump go automatic and catches all five Slim Jims in the air in one motion. He says, "Sometimes I'm so badass I can't even handle myself."

"Ha," Sam laughs. "Ahahhaa."

Dean's obviously replaying what he just said, and when he remembers he says, "Handle myse— The dick jokes are getting old, man."

"No, see, they're funny now," Sam tells him. "Maybe they used to suck. Or was it blow?"

Dean groans and puts his face in his arm on the roof of the car over how bad that was. He goes for his flask and Sam catches his other hand over the roof, a hardness of bones that are made of the same stuff as his own.

"Dean," he says.

Dean just retaliates by twisting their fingers together so it's painful. He says, "Just a little of this is fine," drinking and replacing the flask in his pocket. "I can still drive."

Sam would let his concern show on his face, but Dean looks earnest and hasn't pulled away, and Sam doesn't want to ruin a good thing. He goes for joking, instead, asking, "That's what she said?"

Dean's about to argue it, but a door slams and they both look over. A man from the green minivan in front of them starts gassing up. He's with his family, the back of his kids' heads visible through the window, just barely. Then, Sam's eyes refocus and all he can see is he and Dean, their reflections clear like close ghosts of two men on the grubby glass. They're two guys holding hands across the top of a junker of a car, gripping each other not by some happenstance but with casual conviction. It's at once all them and nothing like them at all. It's like a picture of strangers touching and it is unsettling, wrong.

Dean must see it, too. He pulls his hand away with an abrupt jerk he tries to make casual. In the reflection, Sam watches him turn and rub a hand across the back of his neck, and then head to place the done gas nozzle back into the pump.

Either one of them could laugh at this point or get pissed or say "awkward" and that would be that. But neither of them do.

So they get back in the car. Dean reaches beneath the steering wheel to hotwire the old engine into life again, and Sam refolds his legs into the footwell, like he's an origami short person. He allows himself a couple moments to be righteously annoyed at the general state of things and thinks, "it's not fine," loud enough that he wonders if he said for real.

And instead of slinging an arm across the back of the passenger seat to look behind them, Dean stops and just glances over his shoulder twice. They roll out of the gas station and onto the road, and get back on the highway just fine. The minutes stretch on without a word, so that, by the time Sam's thought of anything to say, too much time has elapsed to get it out, meaning he leaves it and so does Dean.

 

 

They hit Waukesha County just as Sam is ready to crawl out of his skin. Lucifer has been proselytizing from the backseat about the wonders of Dean's mouth and the squareness of his shoulders, and isn't it funny how Sam hadn't noticed Dean staring at his ass as he walked into the gas station convenience store? How that apple pie-loving, all-American dad had probably thought they were gay, holding hands over the top of a car that's a red so faded it's nearly in the pink family. Which is unfair, because Dean likes apple pie, too. Not likes, even—loves. And now Dean's probably so creeped out he won't look at Sam, won't take any more breaks, even though Sam's sure he's wanted to pull over again with the number of espresso drinks he'd had.

They roll into this five road town where the streets are straight and dusty, and seem to only come to corners in order to make ice cream shops or bars. The corner Dean chose online is on Main Street and they have no trouble finding a parking spot right in front, meaning alcohol as soon as possible. The sign is battered and the place looks no-nonsense. Sam's relieved, for once, to get drinks in both of them. He'll be able to hide behind a glass and Dean will just relax.

Dean orders two shots of whiskey, and Sam is about to order a beer when Don Stark slides in next to them and tells the bartender, "A bottle of scotch."

Sam lets out a breath.

Don looks at him and says, "Surprised I showed?"

"Sorry, I thought you were someone else," Sam says.

Dean doesn't comment. He reaches an arm behind Sam to shake Don's hand. "Hey, Don."

They find a table, where Dean sits as far away from Sam as he possibly can in a booth with three people. Sam reflects objectively how this morning was like a wake up call, reminding Sam how the rest of the world does have a way of breaking into he and Dean's lives to cast strange light on whatever they have.

Don pours out a few glasses. He sits back in his rolled, richly woven shirtsleeves and sniffs at his drink before taking a sip.

"We would like to extend our deepest gratitude," Dean starts, but Don cuts him off with a short wave of his hand.

"Oh, save it. You two are amusing and I was bored."

"Oh yeah?"

"Property development isn't the most stimulating of occupations. And you really did save my marriage." He sips deep before placing his drink carefully on the tabletop. "Although, I wouldn't say that to Mags, if I were you. She still holds that it was her killing off everyone I'd made that business deal with that finally got through to me."

"Did you tell her you were here?"

"You think I keep secrets from her now? I've learned my lesson. I've come up against a lot of things, but she is particularly ferocious."

Dean sits back. "Bet you used to take down some big bads in your day, huh?"

"I was born in the Renaissance...all sorts of strange creatures."

Dean and Don have a conversation of some kind, while Sam sits back and takes it in. The bar is rough and dusty. It's low-lit by the dull afternoon glinting inside, and there are green, hanging lamps over every table. It's the wild Midwest, and they are like cowboys, gearing up for a shootout with the smell of drink on their breath and pistols snug in their back pockets.

Jody looks straight out of a western when she steps in. It's the type of place where law enforcement is revered, so that, when she sees who the sheriff is with, the bartender hollers to them, "On the house!"

Dean whistles. "Sweet deal."

"Sheriff Mills, this is Don Stark," Sam says as Jody reaches their table. "Don, Sheriff Jody Mills."

Don arches an eyebrow and looks from Dean to Sam. "Your kind of sheriff?"

Jody pulls aside her jacket to flash the badge at her belt before sitting.

"Apologies," he concedes, and pours out another glass.

"And should I even ask what you do, Mr. Stark?"

"I pretty much oversee the growth of a small town."

"Well, we've got something in common then."

Dean sighs. "We can't all be lucky enough to be unemployed."

"Jody," says Sam. "It's good to see you again. Thanks for driving so far."

She waves it away. "Like I said, I owe it to Bobby."

Dean sits back. "You don't have to keep an eye out on us, just because—"

"Just because what? I'm not treating you like kids, I'm treating you like people who are trying to save middle America from monsters. And, as a police officer, I feel duty bound to stick my neck out right along with you."

"Sure," Sam says. "That's all it is."

She smiles. "Okay, fine. That time travel thing was kind of fun, in retrospect."

Sam had almost forgotten what Sheriff Mills was like. It's refreshing. She carries a certain amount of normalcy with her, morals that aren't yet out of whack, new to the game but extremely competent. And she believes in monsters, which means, of all the people he and Dean meet, she's like the most optimistic person they've come into contact with who has their head on straight.

She turns to Dean. "I hope you adequately thanked your brother for that. The poor boy spent all day and half the night researching, worried sick."

Dean throws Sam a look, their exchange safe because there are other people with them. "Yeah, I said thanks. Right?"

Sam shrugs. "Yeah."

"Time travel," Don says, sounding mildly impressed.

"He saved Dean from being stuck in the forties." Don nods thoughtfully and Jody turns a reproving look back on Dean. "So, unless I'm misunderstanding something, I'd say you owe him one."

Sam really looks Dean in the eye for the first time in hours, a tiny smile pulling at his mouth. "Yeah, Sheriff Mills is right. You totally owe me."

Dean arches an eyebrow and Sam feels a pulse of relief.

"Children," Don says. "We're here for a reason that, if I'm not mistaken, pertains to that thing I saved you from in that motel room. The thing you said couldn't be killed?"

"That's correct." Sam consciously switches gears to the business at hand. "These guys — Leviathans — they're really nasty. They take over people's bodies and eat people. They've done some weird testing on people, for reasons we don't know of."

"Nice."

"And we may have found a base of operations. As I told Jody, there's this field half an hour from here. Dick Roman seems to be building something on it."

"The politician."

"He's not a politician," Jody tells him. "He writes self-actualization books."

"Looks like one, though. Smarmy bastard."

"A contact of ours sent over some video of the site showing gatherings on Friday nights. We're going in tonight to check it out, and then we'll go from there."

"What contact?"

Dean slugs back his whiskey and says, "A funny old man in a trailer. Real paranoid. Thinks there're tracking devices in poptarts."

Sam says, "Carrying on...we'll be bringing supersoakers filled with borax solution, just in case."

"Cleaning supplies," Dean tells Don. "The only thing that kills them."

Don raises an eyebrow. "At least you've made some strides since I last saw you."

"That would be Jody," says Sam. "She figured it out."

Jody raises her glass. "Thank you very much."

"And I can knock a few unconscious at a time," Don tells them. "But, as you doubtless saw, they spell will only last thirty-six hours or so. It should help, however."

"Well," Jody says. "There you go."

"It's just recon," Sam says, thinking it's never just recon.

Dean sits back and picks up his glass. "Well, looks like we've got a plan. A toast to the team."

 

 

They head down to the field at seven-fifty PM, a motley crew if ever there was one. They parked a ways away, and now Dean and Don are ambling down the road, pleasantly inebriated, Sam has Lucifer matching his strides one for one and it's annoying, and Jody has told Sam at least five times that she's totally fine — totally fine — with trespassing.

"I'm surprisingly unconcerned," she says as she follows Sam into the tall grass, breath coming out in white puffs. The crickets go quiet. "I mean, in spite of the fact that we don't have legal reason to be here. Despite the fact that, were we to be caught, I mean, especially with the unregistered guns the two of you are packing—"

Dean holds up an orange supersoaker. "If anything, we'll be using these."

"We'll be fine," Sam assures her. "We're good at getting out of situations."

"Totally fine," she says again. "Totally."

They reach the edge of the mown field. 

"Guess we could have just followed the cars," Dean says, quietly. 

They stop just before the underbrush does and pass two pairs of binoculars between them. Cars are pulling up to park in an impromptu lot on the grass, and people are trickling into the tent, which is large and canvas, like the one that they'd seen years back, when Sam had taken Dean to visit a faith healer about his heart.

Jody sounds almost disappointed when she whispers, "These people look pretty normal."

"A lot of things do," Don mutters back.

Meanwhile, Lucifer is standing with a finger to his lips, apparently deep in thought. Sam tells himself he isn't waiting to hear it, that he's not disappointed when Lucifer only says, "Hm, I wonder if the sheriff knows."

"Sammy?"

"What," Sam hisses.

"I said your name like three times," Dean mutters, closer to his ear than absolutely necessary and Sam holds still. "Are you seeing...you know?"

"Yes, okay? But it's fine."

He feels the warm brush of Dean's fingers against his, and keeps watching the tent. Dean gets his thumb against the seam on Sam's palm and Sam moves belatedly away, tugging his hand and feeling somehow disappointed. "Now's not the time."

Dean presses a little closer, maybe to underline what he's saying. "We can't really afford distractions right now. I thought maybe—"

Sam shoots a glance to where Jody and Don are looking through pairs of binoculars two feet to his right, and then elbows Dean so he shifts away. Dean clears his throat quietly and pinches Sam's hip and Sam jerks away further. "Dean." 

"You know, that's really distracting," Don says in a normal voice. 

"I know," Sam grits out.

"Anything you'd like to share?"

Dean angles his body in front of Sam's just the smallest bit. "We're good."

"All right," Don says, and then mutters, like they've actually proven it to him now, "Kids."

"That's sweet," Lucifer says. Sam accepts the pair of binoculars from Jody.

He watches the silent road and surveys the parked cars, and then turns back to train the binoculars on the flap of the tent. The sky's gone a deep blue, and it's getting almost too dusky to see. There hasn't been a car for the past couple minutes, everyone having shown up somewhat on time for the meeting apparently. The entrance is still.

"I think we need to get closer," Don says. "All we've established is what your dubious contact has already told us, that there are at least a hundred people who gather here."

"Let's go, then."

They creep out of the weeds and then sprint across the grass, up to the side of the tent.

Sam takes a peek around the edge of the outer flap, supersoaker held taut by his side, and then draws back before leaning in again, to survey. He's got a direct view up to the front, where there's a small stage, and a view of the back of the audience's heads. The interior of the tent's dark enough that he doesn't think they'll be noticed if someone happens to look back.

"The floor's wood," he tells the rest of them. "The audience looks look like they're seated in pews."

He leans back around and watches as men in suits light candelabras up front. The distinct, acrid smell of frankincense wafts out their way.

Don looks in. "It looks like the beginnings of a church."

"Sounds about right." Dean turns to Sam. "How many do you think there are?"

Sam does a quick sample count and then multiplies it. "A couple hundred? Maybe three?"

"Shit."

"It's a good thing this is just recon then."

"We really are going to need a truck full of borax."

"That's what I suggested," Sam says.

"But it was stupid at the time. Now it makes sense."

"Fine."

"Fine."

"Do you two always have little bickering sessions when you're trying to go in unnoticed?" Don says, voice low this time.

Before they can answer, there's the sound of a mic cueing up. The crowd falls into a tense sort of silence and the four of them peer in.

Sam whispers, "That's Dick," to Don and Jody when the man himself walks up to stand in front of the podium. 

Dick leans in toward the mic. "Welcome, one and all."

There is a patter of applause and Dick holds up a hand. "Thank you, thank you."

The applause continues.

"Now I know we've been discussing this for some weeks. And I'd like to personally welcome you to the beginnings of a great moment in our history. It's been a busy couple of months, hasn't it? Sprung from the seas of our prison, into the body of a self-proclaimed God."

The reminder steels Sam's resolve. He feels Dean tense beside him.

Jody leans into him. "What is he talking about?"

"We'll fill you in later."

Dick says, "A couple weeks of arm wrestling with vampires and skinwalkers and similar filth in his stomach and then those Winchesters tried to expel us back from where we came."

The crown shifts and boos.

Dick smiles. It looks almost beatific on his face. "But we held on."

A rabble.

"We held on and overtook an angel!" he shouts. "A warrior of God, weakened by our sheer will to reclaim what is rightfully ours. We drove him into the waters and then dispersed, disseminating our hungry spirits into the creeks and channels and lakes of Earth— or the greater part of the Midwest, at least."

"But wait." Dick holds up a hand. "The story's not over. We were confused. We were confused, and we were finding our footing on land, overtaking the hosts that our Father created— lower on the food chain, hardly even palatable unless you dip 'em in something hot, am I right?"

There are a few shouts from the audience.

"Nacho cheese or hot fudge, or cut off the bitter outer skin to poach what's inside. Human fruit— rightfully ours for the picking."

"Sick bastard," Dean says and Sam feels Jody shudder on his other side.

"Humanity...any other animal is at peace with the fact that they'll be eaten, but humans just can't seem to get their tiny minds around it. It's funny, really. It's like they think this isn't the wild. Any other species would take it as pure, basic fact, the circle of life, but humanity by its very nature struggles. God chose them to be saved, they think. But they fail to remember that he left them shortly thereafter.

"But I digress. So, it's been a busy couple of months. Anarchy, let's be honest. An eternal search for food, getting the lay of the land, so to speak. Driven by an intense...yes, you know as well as I do, an intense hunger.

"A hunger, which has been ours for eternities, but which has grown more intense since coming out of Purgatory. And we have wondered why! It was unforeseen! A steady, panging void in our stomachs that is never even close to sated, no matter how much we devour. And believe me, I've eaten a lot."

There is a rumbling of assent, a few sad cries. A man near the edge of the audience takes a Tupperware out of his bag and begins eating what looks like human spleen with chopsticks. Sam wrinkles his nose and looks back to the stage when Dick cries out, "But that is why we're here, isn't it? My brothers, you are what you eat, isn't that the saying? "

"Yes!" a woman yells, echoed by a few others.

"You are what you eat, and the body does not abide malnourishment for long. It grows more ravenous until it is fed on a diet of proper, nutrient-rich sustenance, the likes of which we are in great need. It is that or die. It is either feed ourselves, or die."

"Oh," Lucifer says. "Oh, I see where this is going."

Sam doesn't see where this is going. His fingernails bite into his palm and Dean steps on his foot and leaves it there. But it's more like a mutual "is this really happening?" thing than "maybe you're hallucinating."

"Now, the crux!" Dick shouts, somehow terrifying from the stage because it's clear this grotesque language is honest and leading up to something. "Why we are all here! Ask yourselves, what can do to fill the void? What, if not hot flesh and cheese, not eating one of our brothers in Righteous annoyance, what then, can feed us?"

Sam is almost cringing for the blow, because whatever Dick is about to propose, he is sure it is terrible.

"Yes," says Lucifer.

"And the answer is as you may have come to on your own...Faith! It is not our stomachs but our souls that are ravenous. Ravenous for the Love of God!"

This draws Sam up short. He exchanges a look with Dean and feels hesitant. He's a little confused, a whole lot relieved.

Dick gives the crowd another winning smile. "The void is the eternal search for our Father who art absent. We escaped Purgatory only to fall into yet another box, another pig corral where we wend away the days searching out grubs in the mud and muck, with no Divine Light to fill us. But it is within our power to change that!"

The crowd is getting rowdy, swaying and yelling unintelligibly.

Dick reveals his teeth. He says, "Tomorrow...Tomorrow we will light candles and we will pray as one. Prayer! A conduit to our Father, in hopes that our voices raised together will be strong enough to reach Him!"

"Time to go," Dean whispers.

Sam nods to Jody and Don and they beat a hasty retreat.

 

 

It's a little after eight when they get back into town and break into a house that has a For Sale sign out front and no cars. About seventeen newspapers are scattered, damp with night dew, on the concrete driveway, all Sunday editions. He'd picked the place out online with the combined power of property listings, recent foreclosures, and Google Earth, and with people other than Dean around, is suddenly conscious that he is probably getting too good at this.

The car ride had been subdued, each of them having apparently decided to wait until they got back to discuss what they'd heard. But when they walked in the door, Don started looking around, discussing the specific architectural style of the place, and Dean settled in with the laptop and a stack of articles they'd printed out.

Sam is hanging out on the couch now. He can hear Don and Jody's voices murmuring from down the hall where they're checking out the rooms, which are empty save carpeting and ceiling lamps, and a couple of tables and chairs in the main living space. Dean's frowning and underlining things.

Sam watches for a while, unabashedly. They watch each other all the time, it's normal; they're usually stuck in one room, so it would be weird not to. He lazily traces Dean's features in his mind: profile you'd see in any art history book, strong jaw peppered with sharp stubble, the hint of a cleft chin.

When he says Dean's name, Dean looks up with a pen held between his teeth. "Huh?"

Sam nods to the stack.

Dean shakes his head. "Dick, man." He underlines something and then leans back until his chair is balancing on two legs. "What a shitshow."

"Guy's all about reaching as many people as possible, touching them," Sam says.

Dean eyes him for a beat to long, then returns to the articles.

"Tomorrow night," Sam continues, extending the pun like an olive branch. "He really promised a lot. I wonder if he'll be able to rise to the occasion." 

Dean makes a 'huh' sound, and Sam says, "Although, maybe he'll have performance anxiety."

Dean underlines something else and is quiet for so long Sam thinks he's not going to answer. But then he speaks up. "Well, lucky we'll be there to give him a hard time."

Jody steps into the room just as a smile is starting to tug the side of Dean's mouth, and he holds up the pen to indicate. "Get it? Dick? Hard time? Like, a boner?"

"Ahem."

Dean drops the pen like it's burned him, and clears his throat. "Sheriff Mills!"

"Right," she says. "There was an Italian place on our way into town. Any way I could bribe you boys into picking us up some dinner?"

"Bribery, huh?"

Sam swings to standing. "Of course." 

He waves off Jody's offer to pay, and takes the fact that Dean's staying seated as understood. There's some lesson here, something about not sleeping in the same bed when you're two grown guys, wrapped around each other, about not holding hands over the roof of a car and daring to take a good mood at face value.

He heads down the hall but slows when he hears Jody say, "Aren't you going with him?"

"Sammy's a big boy."

Jody doesn't speak for a second, and when she does it's quieter, so that Sam has to step back to the edge of the door. "The confusion I saw on your faces when I asked if you thanked Sam. It broke my heart."

Dean's tone sounds taken aback, "Excuse me?"

"You didn't celebrate, probably didn't give each other more than a shoulder punch and then moved on to the next life or death situation. I'm on the force, I know how it is. It's hard to show how much you care about someone all the time. But I can't help worrying about you boys."

"Well, we were kind of busy."

"I know, and I know maybe near misses like I saw are run of the mill, what with your line of work, but what about the times that are real bad?"

Dean pauses, then says, "It's not that I don't see what you're saying...."

Sam takes pity on him and steps back to fill up the doorway. "Dean actually does do an excellent job of showing—"

Jody cuts him off. "Sam Winchester, I may not know you well, but I know a self-effacing bastard when I see one. None of that, 'oh shucks it's nothing,' you hear? And Dean probably does the same to you."

Dean grins all cheesy. "Believe me, sweetheart, we know we're awesome."

Jody uses what is probably her mom voice, and says, "Dean Winchester, take your brother out to a nice Italian dinner before you boys get yourselves killed tomorrow and regret it."

"Is that a—"

"Yes."

Dean drops his pen to the table and shuffles his papers into some semblance of fake order. Jody raises her eyebrows at the door.

Sam makes room for Dean to move past him and then follows him down the darkened staircase.

"Such a bitch," Dean tells him as they push outside.

"You're just being a cheapskate," Sam says.

The car looks rusted and pathetic in the moonlight. They get in, and Dean turns on the radio so they don't have to talk.

The restaurant's one of the few on the main street. The place doesn't exactly look casual, and they're quiet as the car bumps over the gravel of the parking lot. 

"This is looking suspiciously like the setup of a date," Lucifer says from the back seat.

Dean opens his door and gets out, making a show of striding off but Sam knows he's being waited for. 

"You're not coming," he tells Lucifer, not expecting it to do any good but still maintaining some degree of conviction that he should at least try. As anticipated, Lucifer just kicks the back of his seat and so he jumps out and follows Dean.

Dean's waiting until Sam's caught up. He's holding the door like he always does. 

"Date," Lucifer says anyhow, and repeats this when Dean is slow to sit at their table. He's just taking off his jacket but apparently it's so that Sam can sit first. Then, when Dean asks Sam if he wants wine, Lucifer repeats, "Date." like he's bored already.

"No," Sam tells him.

Dean shrugs. "Peroni it is, then."

Sam thinks, tiredly, how just ten minutes ago he'd been trying to respect some unspoken rule and avoid being alone with Dean, and now he's got Lucifer edging in on dinner.

As if sensing the irony, the place suddenly gets real crowded. Not just the restaurant, which is busy for just shy of nine, but when Sam looks up to break the silence, he sees that they're five to the table now, and that the thing his knee was brushing was Adam's knee. Sam is living a horror story.

Adam is giving the butter dish a moody look, brooding and with hollowed cheeks and bright eyes. The sight of him sends guilt prickles up the back of Sam's neck. Why are you here? he wants to ask, but he can't say a word, so he pushes his fork into alignment with the knife and pulls his knee away, instead. Meanwhile, Michael is at ease with his ankles crossed under the table, sending just the one smile to acknowledge Sam before he goes back to staring at Dean. They are at a restaurant, but Michael is obviously not hungry for pasta.

"This is nice," Sam lies, because sometimes speaking makes it so and also he needs to hear his own voice right now.

"Yeah," says Dean.

They give each other quick looks and then sit back, taking their drinks.

A bread basket is delivered to their table with six rounds of French bread slices folded into a cotton napkin. One thing that has always left Sam half-intrigued with a battered sort of curiosity, is the continuity of his mind, how when Michael takes a piece and picks it apart on the tablecloth while Lucifer talks around a bite of his own piece, there are four rounds left. And when Lucifer takes another one, they're down to three. Sam doesn't take a piece himself because Dean hasn't reached for the basket and therefore it's possible it's not there at all.

The server brings their drinks and Dean half-smiles at Sam from across the table and nurses his beer in silence. Sam draws a pitchfork in the condensation on the side of his bottle and then wipes it away with his thumb.

The server makes a big show of taking their orders, a napkin draped over one arm, asking if the signores are enjoying their evening so far. Sam gets spinach ravioli and Dean orders something hot and cheesy neither of them pretend to be able to pronounce.

"No garlic," Lucifer notes to Michael. "Date."

Sam wants to say, Dean's not a fan of garlic anyhow but then Lucifer would just posit Dean has always been waiting for Sam to lay one on him, not just tonight. Sam could counter that with, if so, if Dean really wanted to kiss him all the time, he would show it by brushing his teeth more often. But by the time the argument runs its course, dinner will have ended.

Michael snorts and says, "Of course it's a date."

"So bitter, brother. You know, if you'd shown me this sort of attention, maybe things wouldn't have turned out the way they did between us."

"We're spending eternity in a space the size of a supply closet, what more do you want?"

Lucifer peels at the label of Sam's beer, until Sam picks up the bottle and hold it to his lips. 

Lucifer tells Michael, "You're mighty preoccupied with someone else."

Adam only purses his lips at the mention, and Michael tips his head to give him a hot, raking look in the low light that turns Sam's stomach. He's spent more of his existence trapped in a room with the two of them and their relationship than he has topside, although the memories are unreal, wispy but all-pervasive like smoke. The Cage, being small and built for one, meant they had to build vertically. Bunk beds. Sam had spent a lot of time in that bunk, and it had always been a trade off between staring blatantly with a sick fascination as Michael spooned up behind Adam on the bed opposite or trying to avoid thinking about it.

He's brought back to the present from what must seem like some pretty intense spacing out when the server places their plates on the table, and bows away in an exaggerated manner that they're not used to at the diners they usually eat at.

Dean smiles tightly, and when the guy's gone, sighs. Sam answers it with an eye roll, and Dean shakes his head. The understanding knocks them back to the same page and something loosens in Sam's gut.

Dean says, "I feel like we were tricked into this. Jody Mills, man."

"Right? I guess she cares...or something."

"Or something." Dean lounges back with his third beer. "So, what do you think Dick is actually planning to do tomorrow night? I hardly see him as an evangelist. Not without a game plan."

Sam focuses on his brother, rather than on anyone else. "He is a public speaker...but you're right. They must be planning to something. Something other than just prayer."

"What gets me is, Bobby must've seen plans or something. Maybe he could have told us."

"If they were doing tests on humans before...maybe it's something along those lines."

"Yeah." Dean toys with his beer and then says, "So, Sam. I'm sorry I never took you out to dinner to thank you for, you know, saving the world that one time."

"We're here now," Sam says, equally as magnanimous. "That's all that matters."

"But really." And Dean's gaze has gone all soft-set on Sam across the table. "We're always so focused on getting out of the next big scrape, I don't tell you enough how much it means that you're—"

Sam doesn't want him to finish the thought. He understands.

"So," the waiter says, appearing out of nowhere. "Would the signores care for some dessert?"

Sam orders takeaway for Jody and Don, cherry pie for Dean, and a chocolate mousse for himself which he plans on giving to Adam. The kid deserves this one thing at the very least.

As Adam sullenly allows Michael to spoon the last of the mousse into his mouth, Sam jiggles his knee and clears his throat, and looks around the room. He says it again, and means it, "So, this is nice."

Dean has his arm slung over the back of his chair a mirror of Michael. "Yeah, yeah it really is."

 

 

The drive home is all scratchy radio and country ballads, real mellow. Lucifer, tireless, is still murmuring about Dean and Sam and Sam and Dean, and Sam is just lolling his head against the seat while the headlights sweep suburban side streets. Give me the strength to change the things I can and the grace to accept the things I can't, or some shit, he thinks, feeling zen about the whole thing. Panic always comes in waves, and it's only three to the car now, so they're on the ebb.

They park and Dean tips his head towards Sam's and says, "Well, time to see what the kids have been up to." in tones that are suspiciously fond. Sam feels like he's found Dean out and gives Dean a look, to which Dean responds with a warning look of his own, and Sam shrugs and doesn't call him on it. Sometimes words just muddy things, anyway.

They head up the walk and Dean raps the door with the back of his knuckles. It swings open after a minute. It's Don. He shouts over his shoulder, "Honey, the kids are home."

"Guess it goes both ways," Sam says.

When they get to the kitchen, Jody's surrounded in piles of paper and a small selection of Bobby's eternally dusty library.

"What's that you've got there?" Dean asks in a voice that's almost lascivious. And of course, where Sam had noticed the research and not the alcohol, Dean noticed the opposite.

Jody holds up the bottle by the neck and asks Sam, "Still think Bobby'd want us to drink this?"

Dean peers over. "Walker. Nice. From 'R'...Probably stands for Rufus."

"That's what Sam said. So...?"

Dean sits down in a chair. "Hell yeah they'd want us to drink it. In fact, night before the big game? It's like a tradition."

"Well, let's crack it open, then."

Sam procures tumblers from a cabinet and washes the dust out. When he deposits them on the table, between the papers, Jody's got the bottle cap between her teeth and she pours out a slug in each. They raise their glasses.

"Bobby Singer," she says. "I never took you for someone who drank whiskey that didn't come from a bathtub. Damn sellout."

Dean says, "To Bobby, an old drunk who knew his shit."

"You saved the world and never got thanked for it," says Sam.

And Don finishes it off with, "If you're half the man this booze implies, I'd be glad to have known you."

It's all a joke, until suddenly it's not. They have a couple, and Jody says, "Oh, Bobby," and Sam wants to tell her, this isn't how we do it. We don't dwell out loud, even if we want to— we do the work he would have wanted and hope it's testament enough.

Don saves it. "So, tomorrow night," he says. "Am I the only one who thinks we should have a more concrete plan than...well, no plan?"

Sam spreads his hands on the table. "Well, we don't even know what this group prayer session's going to entail. It's possible nothing will happen, and it's as innocuous as it sounds, or the ceremony could actually work and there could be some terrible fall out."

"Like what?"

He looks at Dean. "Like a door maybe?"

"A door?" asks Jody.

"How much do you know about these guys?"

"Well," she says. "Bobby had one in the basement of that cabin, and he said it was a monster. He said you guys hadn't found a way to kill it, that he'd tried everything he could think of. So, I figure they must be something powerful?"

"They are. And they've been around a long time."

"What are we talking about? Hundreds of years?"

Don says, "that's not that long," as an aside.

"As in, hundreds of thousands."

Dean snags the bottle and says, "Hold on, Sammy. You don't know that for sure. It could be millions."

"Yeah, okay, maybe millions."

She looks between the two of them. "You boys are shitting me."

"The Bible speaks of them as whales. Giant, capable of eating anything. And last year a door was opened—"

"A door? To where?"

"Purgatory?" Sam hazards.

"Look," Dean says. "All that matters is, God put these guys away, and now they're out. They're doing some crazy shit—"

"—organizing—"

"—And it's not looking good."

"Really? God?" Don sips his drink and says, "I'm helping the losing side, aren't I?"

"Wait, so, let me get this straight," Jody starts, but Sam smiles apologetically.

"Heaven exists, too."

"Well, at least there's that. Dick did mention an angel. But all right, I'm getting the feeling I should just not try to get my head around this and we should focus on figuring out what to do about it."

"We should go in armed," Don says. "Two toy squirt guns and a couple buckets isn't going to be enough."

"...machetes?" Sam suggests. "There's a lake nearby, so if we lose the heads...."

Dean says, "So, what then? Something goes wrong and then we've got to chop off a hundred heads? Stark can stun a couple, sure, but I doubt the good sheriff is up for taking off heads. No offense meant, of course."

"Believe me," Jody says. "None taken."

"And we've only got two machetes."

Don waves a hand. "I'll call in a sanitation truck and have it filled with cleaning detergent. We can use a hose, if something does happen."

Sam and Dean look at each other. Sam shrugs. "That's a good plan."

Don says, "Of course it is. I work with construction companies, if you'll remember, so I can get one out by tomorrow. Now, can we please drink this already?"

 

 

Eight-hundred year old witches can feel the effects of alcohol just the same as non-octacentenial non-witches. Every day bears new facts, Sam thinks in a reeling sort of way while Don makes rambling points about the house they're in.

"These hard lines do nothing for the doubtless watery light that manages to filter through those tiny windows." He gestures widely. "Whoever designed this was some sort of dweller of darkness. My castle — let me tell you, Miss Jody Mills — had flying buttresses and arches. And tall windows that let the light in, even during winter."

Jody is still mostly upright in her chair. She says, with some suspicion, "You had a castle? How drunk are you, Mr. Stark?"

"I am not drunk," Don says. "Soused, maybe. But drunk implies a certain novice quality."

"Exactly," Dean tells Sam, looking up from where he's leaning against his arm on the table.

Don continues, "And to be fair, I only had the place for a few weeks, in the eighties."

Sam straightens a little. "Would that be the thirteen eighties?" He's been waiting to ask Don about the Renaissance, ever since he first brought it up. Long ago, Sam's minor had been in art history and he's somehow still interested.

Don ignores him. He fills his glass with another inch and tells Jody, "It was a hostile takeover of a corrupt duke, and it was before my wife, Mags — love of my life, fire of my soul — before she realized what upkeep a place like that would entail. Needless to say, we relocated shortly thereafter to a modest thing at the edge of the forest. A pity, though."

"Eh, castles are passé, " Jody says. "Tacky."

"Mm," Don agrees, and pours them more.

Later, when Jody is taking a cigarette break, Don says, "You know, I have to thank you. You once spouted some couple's therapy, and it helped. Me and Mags are back to puppy love."

Sam nods as blandly as he can, carefully, because he's still a little wary of Don despite their partnering on saving the world for the time being, "Well, that's nice to hear."

"What about the good Sheriff? She have a partner of the romantic sort?"

"Eaten," Dean says. He's staring into his empty glass. "By her zombie kid."

"Well. In any case, she's a classy lady. And she's worried about the two of you."

"Yeah, she said."

Don nods. "Well, I'd advise you to follow your own advice."

Sam schools his face as best he can, doesn't answer, and Dean is pouring himself another drink like he didn't hear. Don's phone rings, then, before he can continue the thought or they can laugh it off. He leans back in his chair, casual grace of someone who's learned to live in his own skin, which leaves Sam watching Dean from across the table.

"It's like sleep away camp with the boys, like that one summer in the Carpathians," Don tells Mags, whose voice is tinny and demanding through the phone. Then amends, "well, men. Well, not all men. Adults, to be more accurate." There's a pause and then, "No, look. Yes there's a woman here, but it's not like that, Mags."

Sam watches and Dean finally looks up and watches him back. Sam can feel the whiskey burning thin under his skin. It's a sort of moment that stretches and they are both aware of it, so that when he says, "Dean—" Dean shakes his head, ready for it.

The implications of that drag at Sam's heart. It means Dean knows.

Dean pours himself out another drink as Sam's head spins. Dean knows which means he has been consciously choosing to ignore it. Dean's been willing to put the knowledge that there's something Sam shouldn't say from his head for who knows how long, for both of their sakes. If Sam says it, he'll fuck things up.

Between them, Don says into the phone, "Why didn't I tell you? Well, it didn't seem important!"


	3. Chapter 3

It'll probably be noon before anyone gets up, so Sam pulls on track pants and a hoodie, and goes on a long run. The neighborhood is quiet. He passes people walking their dogs and a lone kid who is up at seven chalking a driveway. He leaves two churches behind him and a tiny school with a red roof and frosted windows, his feet hitting the pavement, pounding out resolve on certain matters that he needs to conclude in the privacy of his own head.

Drinking good whiskey while entertaining even the smallest hope is dangerous when you have horrible secrets that could ruin everything you've ever loved. The amount of times Sam has told himself this over the years and still almost blown it cannot be counted, and last night only brought that fact back into the light.

It was too close. He's going to break everything. Luckily, though, even if Dean suspects, even if Dean knows there's something, there's no way he could know the extent. Maybe he thinks Sam hasn't named it yet, maybe he doesn't know it's everything.

Sam chooses to believe this, as he's sprinting now, overly awake while the entirety of the world creaks on. He focuses on the glowing feeling of resolve that's now bubbling up in his chest. It's the certain brand of virtue that can only grow from deciding to not push for anything romantic with your brother, and although it feels like desperation, Sam knows it's not. It's just decision, and the sad undertow is just a natural part of letting go.

True, Sam had decided the same thing once, when he'd gone to college and had been serious about it, serious about putting time and distance between them. He'd even told Dean not to call, which had been the worst. They didn't talk for two years that time, and then Dean had come and dragged him home — in their car and with a look on his face — and Sam's been backsliding ever since.

Now, though, he's not doing away with anything that they've known, not really. This is just stone two. This is Sam accepting reality, and in order to do that, he has to let go of a hope that was unfounded from the first. 

By the time he gets back to the driveway and jogs over the abandoned newspapers still in their plastic, he's made his mind up. He's not sure how to disentangle that thread of hope from the rest of himself, but he's going to do it.

He thinks this, but when he lets inertia tumble him through the front door and into the kitchen, there's Dean. He's seated at the table in a black t-shirt and ripped jeans and white socks, as if to prove a point. His hair soft and mussed, and the sun catches his eyelashes when he looks up at the noise Sam made when he practically fell through the door.

He's Sam's and Sam's his, and it's proven when Dean blows his nose on a piece of research that's scattered from last night and has the gall to look Sam over and say, "You're disgusting."

"Fuck you," Sam says, words leaving his mouth more like a promise than anything. He unsticks the hoodie form his chest.

Dean apparently doesn't hear Sam's tone, or is set on pretending everything is normal. "You're the sweatiest person that's ever lived. There's coffee if you want some."

Sam feels giddy with being thankful for his brother. Dean, who loves him enough to unsee the thread of fucked up that runs through the virtue. Standing still, he feels stupid, a moment of extreme clarity. There's no separation of how he loves Dean. Of course there's not.

"Sam?"

He edges out of the room again, breath still short. The whole realization feels strange and comfortable and worn, like a renewed sense of doom that's exhilarating as it is terrifying.

"Be back in a sec," he says with his heart hitting his ribcage so hard it's like he's still out running.

He goes to shower and change, and when he heads down to the kitchen, Dean's thrown a couple sandwiches together on a plate and is half done with his own. Sam eats his, with coffee at his elbow. He watches Dean twist the top off a beer.

Dean says, "what?"

Sam says, "nothing." and keeps chewing.

Dean is otherwise quiet, careful. In a day or two, Sam thinks, they'll be back to normal. Nothing says, "we're fine" like the termination of a hunt and a few days to recover in some no-name motel. Dean will ignore what went unspoken, and Sam will be more careful, and he'll grow old with this and the urgency will pass.

What feels like seconds later, Dean says, "Sam!"

Sam looks up, to where Dean's holding his beer. "What?"

"Get your own next time."

"What?"

Dean turns the bottle upside down and a solitary drop hangs onto the lip, but that's it.

Sam frowns. "I didn't drink that."

"Neither did I."

This has Sam's attention. "Dean...."

Dean says, "OK, I am telling you, flat out, I did not drink it."

"It's fine if—"

"No, it's not 'fine if.' Believe me, I know it's a bad sign when you drink a whole beer without noticing." It's more than they've said on the subject. Dean goes on to say, "You may not like the amount I down, but that doesn't mean I like the idea of alcohol-based amnesia. Okay?"

Sam humors him. "Okay, so, it's right there next to you, but you claim you didn't drink it—"

"Didn't touch it—"

"—and I sure as hell didn't touch it—"

"Sure you didn't."

Sam looks at him incredulously. "Who drinks beer and coffee?"

"Well...okay, fair point. Unless—"

"Unless what?"

Dean stands and Sam leans back in his chair, wary. When Dean grabs the front of his shirt, he jerks away but it quickly turns into a scuffle. Sam gets Dean into a headlock, face in his armpit, and Sam says, breathing hard and the warm press of Dean all over him, "Let's talk about this like adults, okay? Wanna tell me why the sudden—"

Lucifer says, "Isn't it obvious? Sudden, uncontrollable lust—"

"Lucifer," Dean says, and Sam lets him go with a guilty jolt.

There's the sound of a throat clearing and Sam's guard drops long enough for Dean to step unnecessarily close, between his knees where Sam's propped back against the table. Dean leans in closer still and says, "Let me smell your breath."

"Sheriff Mills," Sam squeaks.

He gets a hand over Dean's face and pushes him away but with an audience is less forceful and eventually he ends up sitting there at the edge of the table with his head tipped up while Dean smells his mouth. It's gross and a test of self-restraint on any count.

Dean steps back a second later and declares, "OK, just coffee."

Sam frowns. "Told you."

Jody frowns and addresses Sam. "Is he always beating up on you?" 

"No!" Dean says just as Sam says, "Yes!"

Dean frowns at him and Sam attempts to look wan until Jody turns her back on him to reprimand his brother, at which point he smiles darkly.

"He's playing it up," Dean says. "Turn around! Look at him!"

Sam is in love with Dean and maybe that's inexcusable, but he's also his brother and Dean totally deserves this.

Jody says, "Dean Winchester, you're not a bully, I know that, but what have I told you about taking that boy for granted."

"Oh my god," Dean says. "He is smirking and you don't even see."

"It's fine, Jody," Sam says, which, as suspected, only makes her continue to give Dean a stern talking to as she begins to make her own breakfast.

 

 

The day goes. There is an unmistakable tension that can be directly attributed to their plan to crash a Leviathan gathering in T minus eight hours. Sam is feeling the weirdness of working with other people. Jody and Don can look out for themselves, but he's a little hesitant to lead them into something even he isn't sure about.

Time eats away at itself, however. At one in the afternoon, Sam looks over some research at the table with Don. Dean commandeers the laptop and starts ostensibly reading up on Dick and Jody joins the three of them in the living room and starts in on a backlog of paperwork she brought with her.

At three, Sam gets his computer back, somehow, and starts looking up alcoholism and memory loss. He wants to look up what to do when every decision you make turns out to be impossible, but any vague inquests into his incestuous issues usually turn up porn and not much else.

At four o'clock, Don is on a call from the office. Has been taking calls, in fact, for the better part of the day. Meanwhile, Sam watches Dean watch anime. With a hand over the mouthpiece, Don gives Sam the bland piece of wisdom, "Time waits for no man."

Sam believes him.

Now, at five o'clock, Sam rocks back in his chair and pulls his hands over his head in a long stretch. He groans, "Damn, that feels good." And when he opens his eyes, an arm pulled back behind his neck, Dean's just stepping in from the kitchen and he's the first thing Sam sees. He staring at Sam's abs. It's the tiniest of moments, just one glance in the history of everything, but somehow it's a tipping point, and everything goes to shit. 

Dean's eyes meet Sam's, and then he looks past, gaze going bland and sliding past. He wanders over to the table and takes his seat again. Sam is still watching him, rationalizing. They look at each other all the time, he reminds himself. It is normal, even if it seems more than normal, sometimes.

Dean meets his look head on, and it's like a challenge. He raises an eyebrow and then looks carefully away, before Sam does, back to the computer. There's no remorse, just acknowledgement and dismissal. 

Sam reads through information they have on the luxury cruise liner business and bites at his thumbnail. Dean doesn't look at him again. Sam knows because he's watching him out of the corner of his eye, thinking he's probably tipped over the edge into delusion again.

He knows that cerebrally, but the intrepid, stupid part of him is all interest, because Dean is acting suspicious. His movements are calm and controlled, but his hands are shaking, just a little, and he's worked his way through a whole flask with devil-may-care swigs.

"Dean," Sam says.

Dean twists the lid back on the flask with a squeak and gives him a look. "None of your business, Sam," he tells him, too quick.

Sam tries not to rise to the bait. He looks at it objectively.

Objectively, the only reason Dean is this aggressively flaunting something that worries Sam is because he knows Sam can't call him out on it. And Sam is sure to a 97 percent confidence that Dean just checked him out with some sort of intent. A silent agreement was forged three minutes ago because where Dean suspects about Sam, maybe Sam knows something, too. Something that could potentially jeopardize their entire relationship, but Sam's natural inclination is to have faith. That morning, screws were synched and latches dropped, case closed, but now it's back again and stoked like a wildfire.

Dean stands and wanders around the room. He drinks the last of the flask and shoves it back in his jeans. Even if they don't talk about it, Sam's got that warm splinter of hope digging into him, like maybe if he can do this right....He doesn't trust Dean as far as he can throw him, not with this, so when Dean nods to the kitchen and says, "Should do a little research," to the room at large, Sam kicks out an empty chair for him.

Dean looks at him, calculating. He says, "Actually," and moves to the door without looking back. "Actually, I'm gonna get some supplies." 

Sam stands, too. "Fine, then. I'll go with you."

Which makes Dean stop with his hand on the handle. Don is watching them with vague interest and Jody, openly. Sam watches Dean work his jaw just like their father and grandfather when faced with a difficult decision. Dean stares into some middle distance of the room until he says, gruffly to the door, "Fine, suit yourself. Just...I don't really want to spend any time with Lucy is all."

The mention jumps Sam's pulse up, almost as sure as if Lucifer actually did appear out of nowhere.

"Don't be a dick," he tells him, but Dean never jokes about this. It's something unconsidered. Maybe that's what Dean's acting weird about—

Don interjects with, "Girlfriend?"

"No!" they both say.

He holds up a hand. "All right."

Dean yanks open the door and stomps out.

"I'm sorry," Sam tells them, and then says, louder so Dean can hear, "He's being a jerk."

 

When they get to the convenience store, it's like stalking prey. Sam doesn't want to be anywhere near Dean, but he also wants to be stuck by his side because his interest is piqued, two urges which are equally strong and diametrically opposed, so what ends up happening is that they trail each other down aisles, existing under neons, always aware of one another but never talking. It would be amusing if Sam didn't feel the need to avoid Dean's eye every time he caught him staring.

Dean doesn't seem to need much of anything. A very tangible waiting feeling grows up between them. He grabs a 24 pack of Coronas and puts them in his basket, and Sam frowns and moves to the next aisle. When he sees Dean next, there's just a six pack, like magic.

And by the time they leave the store they fall into step next to each other, feet crunching over rain-slick asphalt. Sam shoves his hands in his pockets and doesn't offer to carry any of the bags, waiting Dean out. They're both wound up so tight that when Dean kicks a bottle top that hits ineffectually against a car tire, cursing under his breath, Sam grunts in agreement, because the tension is such a palpable, understood thing.

For the entire ride back, Sam sits slumped against the window, ignoring how Lucifer is giving him tips and prods in the wrong direction. Dean, meanwhile, is sitting ramrod straight. They've spent just under a decade learning their driving language, and right now it's the wrong place, wrong time, in the middle of a hunt and staring them in the face.

Lucifer says, "Sammy" in Dean's voice, low and broken, just as Dean's pulling the car to the curb, parking down the street from their house so as not to alert any neighbors. Sam takes a couple breaths, shifting uncomfortably at the way the tone gives him worried feelings in his chest even though it was a borrowed part of the whole, a facsimile of the guy currently next to him, staring straight ahead.

Dean's hands are flexing on the steering wheel, and he says to the dash, "You just gonna sit there, or are you going to help me carry the stuff?"

Sam reaches back for the bags and notices, with some modicum of relief, that while he was gathering his bearings, Lucifer left the backseat to the grocery bags and detritus of late night drive-thrus.

The relief lasts for a short moment, giving way to concern when Dean starts jiggling his door handle but can't seem to open it. He presses unlock and jerks the handle more and more erratically, and tries to wedge up the lock itself, but none of it does him any good.

"Seriously?" Sam yanks at the handle on his side but it's similarly useless.

"Embarrassing," Dean grumbles. "Guess we'll have to call Stark and the sheriff."

They reach into their pockets in tandem and then share a look of joint unease.

Dean's eyes are big and uncertain when he says, "Sam?"

"I don't have mine either."

There's a sharp, sudden rap against the window and Sam jumps in his seat. Dean is scuffling around on the floor and reaching his arm in the cracks by the center console, and Lucifer has his face at eye level, passenger side, breath making frost on the glass.

His voice is muted when he says, "Hey." He wipes at the window like he's trying to see in. He rattles the door and finally says, "Looks like you're trapped in there."

"We're trapped," Sam repeats. "You think? You're the one who fucking did it."

Lucifer frowns. He and Dean say, "Me? I didn't do this." at the same time.

Lucifer taps the window again. "You might as well talk."

Sam watches him wander off. He slams a palm against the window as if that will help. "Oh, come on!"

Dean slouches next to him. "That's what I'm saying. This never would have happened in my baby."

"I mean, it was Satan."

Dean gives him a cool look, like Sam has ever joked about that sort of thing. "You're shitting me."

"No."

"Well...Well how does that make sense? Did you lock us in the car?"

Sam looks at him, sneering, before saying, "The fuck do you think I know?"

"Dammit." Dean mutters, "I thought I told you, no Lucifer."

Sam gets rationally pissed at this, clenching his hands on his thighs, and Dean takes a deep breath and then says, "Well," like it's decided, and then turns in his seat and kicks Sam's window, hard, narrowly missing Sam's face.

"Hey!"

"Okay, try again," Dean says, and bends to mess around under the steering wheel. He sparks wires but nothing happens. He mutters, "This is friggin weird. If this is a hallucination...well. I'm having it, too. What are we going to do? We need to get back."

"I know," Sam says.

"For real," Dean says.

"I know." Sam knocks his head back against the headrest and sprawls out, the universal sign for giving up.

There's a long silence during which they both stare at the house, which sits asleep down the block, abandoned in the twilight, all the lights switched off and windows dark.

With little warning, Dean grabs Sam's hand and squeezes, pressing his thumb into Sam's palm like he has any right.

Sam twists in his seat and gets a knee up between them, tugging his hand from Dean's halfheartedly. "Let go."

Dean's holding Sam's fingertips with his own and it hurts. His face looks randomly malicious for a second but it's just Sam projecting. Having now dug his fingernail into Sam's skin, Dean tries the door again with his other hand. It doesn't budge.

Sam gives his hand another tug and says, "Dean." He feels like a lab rat or something, that or a five year old sulking, no matter how warranted.

Dean seems to get it. "Goddammit," he says, and sits back. "So, what does Lucifer have to say about this?"

Sam grimaces. "Nothing useful. Well, he thinks we should, um."

"Oh my god," Dean says. "If you say talk...." His eyes are on the road but he smooths his thumb over the dip of Sam's palm like an apology. "I still can't believe this is happening."

"Dean," Sam starts as Dean says to himself, sounding wistful for situations elsewhere: "I could really go for a burger right now."

"Dean, maybe we should talk. What happened this afternoon...."

Their hands are relaxing, forgotten on Sam's knee. Dean says, "You know, nothing good ever starts that way."

"The thing is— I'm not okay."

"Yeah, Sammy. You've told me. When you curled up by the door and stared out all emo after I saved your ass. You think I haven't been worrying about that, oh, I don't know, forever?"

Sam will not be derailed, talking about hunts or who saved who. "I'm not okay," he says again. "But neither are you, Dean!"

"Yeah, you think?" Dean says. "Lucifer — who is not real, if that's slipped your mind — is calling the shots."

"And this thing we're not talking about—"

"Newsflash, Sammy." He waves a hand between them in the dark and says, "This isn't normal!"

"When are we ever normal?"

"Will you stop repeating me?"

"What I mean is," Sam says, loudly, talking over him. "Is that your only argument?"

Dean stares at him, a cool look in his eyes like Sam's gone crazy in other ways, and Dean's just now seeing it. "It's been a damn good argument our entire lives."

"Living in constant fear that you're going to die! It's not normal!" Sam says loudly back.

"Yeah, well!" he doesn't seem to have a followup, and yells instead, "Why are we yelling?"

"I don't know!"

They're brothers, Sam thinks wildly, this happens.

Their hands are sweating together on his knee as they stare at each other. Dean, as if to remedy this, turns his to wipe his palm against Sam's knee but only ends up leaving his hand cupped over it. It's part of the problem; everything is so natural between them that there's a line and they crossed it at some point without realizing. And now here Sam is, feeling jumpy and trapped, and when he reaches back to try the door again, nothing happens.

Dean notices and laughs and says, "oh my god." and, seemingly unaware that he's holding Sam's leg in place. Sam has a dark suspicion. Maybe the reason he hasn't been able to pinpoint the line between what is normal and what isn't is they haven't even been straddling it for years now. Instead, they're way off to one side, far away, the line a receding thing they've been mistaking for the horizon.

"Look," Sam says. He feels hot along the back of his neck and completely out of his mind, the calm a cover for how hard his heart is beating. "Look. It's been a long time."

"Yeah." Dean licks his lip and looks out the window. "A freaking long time."

"It's been a long time, and a long road, so to speak. It isn't too late—"

Dean cuts him off. "For what?" He rests his chin on his hand on Sam's knee and looks at Sam like he's waiting for a bedtime story. He asks, "For what, Sammy? For me to sweep you off your feet, take you away?"

Sam doesn't say anything. He sits, stock still.

Dean has a hard look in his eyes when he says, "Because if memory serves, we've already tried that, and look at things."

Sam can't move. He wants to move but can't. Dean stares at him and Sam stares back. It's really dark and it's not fair, this one moment of honesty and he won't be able to see it clearly.

Dean says, "I'm all fucked up."

"You tell me like I don't know. Jesus, Dean."

There's a rapping at the window and they both jump, heads hitting the roof. Sam rubs the spot, mainly to do something, and Dean touches his hair and looks past him.

"Thank God," he says, loud, talking through the glass.

The door pulls open and Sam nearly falls out onto the sidewalk, but catches himself on the door frame.

"You boys get lost?" 

It's Don. He brushes a hand off on his pants and then opens the back door and takes out a couple bags.

"There was some supernatural lock on the doors," Dean says.

To which Don answers, "There's also a rainbow slinky in your backseat."

Dean grabs a bag and slams the door shut. "Just some plastic crap."

"That's what now, number three? Third time I've saved your short lives?"

"Believe me, sometimes it feels like an eternity," Dean mutters and they all troop inside.

Dean splits to head for the room when they get inside and Sam's stomach is at his feet, a numbness around the very thought of Dean, as he walks into the kitchen and grabs himself a drink.

"Look, he declared his undying love for you," Lucifer starts in. "Which I could have have told you — did tell you — whatever. But he turned you down, for the sake of your hopes and dreams, apparently. Sounds like BS to me, but, you know, if that isn't romance...."

Sam whirls. "Shut up!"

The room is empty.

"You okay there, Sam?"

Sheriff Mills steps in through the doorway.

"Jody."

She doesn't look freaked out, only worried. She has lines around her mouth and a world-weary smile for him when she says, "Bobby told me."

"He did?"

"Well, not in as many words, but he said you had a near miss and had some battle scars."

Sam looks at his hands, the one with an unhealing jag down the sole. His heart hammers in his chest. "Yeah, you could say that. Sorry, it's been a really, really long—"

"You're telling me." She laughs. "Sam, we've all got our thing."

"Yeah, I guess."

She steps further into the room and tells him, "Look, my entire life is a shambles but I still do my job. Before all this, when I first met Bobby, I thought he was just a mean old drunk. Oh, I had a soft spot for him, don't get me wrong."

"Oh yeah?"

"He always laid low but I started to get a vague idea about some random acts of vigilante kindness that could be traced back to him. I kept my eye out and it became clear he was helping out around town, this sad, old man whose wife had passed away. And calls that he was causing trouble, believe me we got those too. Had to bring him in at least a dozen times for drunk and disorderly, and he was always claiming this or that but no one believed him. And then—"

"Then?" He's never heard anyone talk about Bobby, more than a line, and he and Dean share most memories.

"Well, then the zombie thing happened. You boys were there. Imagine finding out the meddlesome coot you've been fining has been saving the world right under your very nose, right from our town of Sioux Falls that's not known for much of anything."

Sam leans back against the door as she says, "Wish I could have helped out more."

"You're here now."

She shrugs. "For what it's worth, right? That day must have been hard. I wish I could've been there."

"Yeah. Three months, now."

The hospital had been a nightmare, three months ago. It had been hours of waiting, bracing his hands against the window sill while a couple had a fight about insurance to his left and a man cried into his sleeve at a constant rate to Sam's right. Remembering it, even after so much time has passed, sends him right back to being useless, just waiting. Dean had stormed up at one point, hand cut up after he'd punched the glass next to an employee's face, and Sam thought, Bobby could die, but Dean was going to hold on to a hope.

That's mainly what Sam remembers of that day, now, thinking back: hospital staff rushing past and around, dressed in blue scrubs, while the slow traffic of those waiting on loved ones moved from the vending machine to seats to the bathroom and back. There had been a betrayed look on Dean's face that said he couldn't believe Sam had already given up, Jesus.

Sam remembers holding back saying that,while Dean had watched hospital drama after hospital drama, Sam had accumulated facts from medical texts he'd pored over, whether in his spare time or during desperate, all-night frenzies over his brother's health in times of dire straits. It was need-to-know information, medical terms and procedures, because everyone he's ever loved has been critically wounded at some point, and Sam takes what control he can.

"Almost time," Jody says.

Sam looks at his watch and nods.

She says, "You know, usually I'd be calling in a few squad cars, but it's just us. Odd."

"Yeah. Kind of go it alone." He sticks his head inside the fridge, going for a beer, and he bangs it against the top in the same spot he'd hit in the car when she says, "You and Dean okay?"

"Yeah," he says, wincing. "We're fine."

"That's never good."

Sam opens the beer, and takes a drink. Jody means well, but if she doesn't want to see a grown man cry, she should get out now. It really has come to that. She appears to be waiting on an answer. He says, "We've got stuff to work out, you know, but..."

"It'll work out. Things usually do." She moves to pat his cheek and Sam ducks out of the way, chuckling.

"You'd be surprised." He reaches to grab another beer, pops the cap and holds it out, arm's length. "Here."

When he looks up, her smile's gone sympathetic.

"You never touch anyone, do you?"

Lucifer says, "now this is just sad. You let me touch you all the time, baby."

"It's been known to happen," he says.

"You know what I mean."

Dean steps in, then, a supersoaker hanging from a hand like he's a ten year old and this is a gang war.

He looks between the two of them. "Well? Let's move this party."

Sam nods. "Be right there."

There must be something in Sam's voice, because Dean stays a second to look Sam in the eyes to check it's all good. Sam is sick of this house and this case and his brother. He's tired and looks away and downs his beer, noticing how, even though Dean had all but said explicitly, I want to do you but I'm not gonna, apparently it means open season now because he drags a look up Sam that says things real loud and it makes Sam flush everywhere. Oh well, a little anger goes a long way before a showdown.

"Slowpoke," Dean accuses, and steps by him, a hand briefly over Sam's heart that's beating hard, just cuz. Sam turns slightly with it and watches him leave, a little longer after.

He can feel Jody watching him, maybe stacking the moments together like clues — Dean's hand pressed to his chest, Sam's answering, anxious pulse. Jody is an officer of the law, after all, so she's familiar with judging innocence or the absence of, and Sam could continue this conversation, but it's time to go and there's nothing left that's safe to say on the subject.

 

 

It's fucking cold and dark, and they're back at the field. They'd been nearly silent the whole drive over. There is the same impromptu parking situation, the field covered half in cars, half by the tent which is glowing, lit up from the inside like some lamp in the dark to attract Leviathans by flame.

The truck Don had ordered is fifty yards away, and the attached hose is snaked along with them so that, when they duck in the back, before the second partition, Jody at Sam's elbow and Don at Dean's, they have the illusion of being fully armed. It remains to be seen, of course.

And they're just on time. 

Dick is dressed in a business suit and has a slide projector cued up, saying, "The meeting will be the answer to all our hopes and dreams." He indicates a section of a graph with a laser pointer, "As you can see here, as proven throughout history, group prayer is the most effective means of...."

Sam turns to Dean, and says, low. "Wasn't this a little too easy? Getting in?"

"It's getting out that's always the hard part," Jody whispers.

Dean's grip tightens on the hose. "Right."

Their attention is caught when a cheer goes up.

Dick clicks and the slide projector dims. "Now," he says, raising a hand. "Let us all pray! But first!"

The lights go down as well, leaving only candles, really, and Sam gets a bad feeling about this.

Dick says, leaning to the microphone, with a hint of a smile. "Bring in the sacrifices."

Don says, "Sacrifices?" in a normal voice, covered by the murmur of the crowd inside.

"Shit." Sam looks wildly around and Dean is staring at him with an expression that probably mirrors his own. 

"Sacrifice!" Dick Roman shouts, and the sea of Leviathans murmur like a regular old congregation. "If we want to talk to God, we have to use the same wavelength! We've got to know the number to dial, and talk through the right mouthpiece!" 

Dean makes a what do we do now face and Sam widens his eyes and shrugs like, how the hell should I know what to do? He thinks quickly to the times they've come across this— angels and demons cutting human throats into chalices to communicate with the other side, and it makes sense.

"Go around back?" Jody says, just as Dick mimes slitting a throat, his finger dragging the front of his neck. "Grab them from whatever van they brought them in?"

It's too late, though. The Leviathans raise their voices in assent, and the flaps behind the podium move aside to reveal a group of humans, bound and gagged.

"Now's looking like a good time to stun them," Sam mutters to Don.

Don nods. "But remember to use the hose. When I get four or five locked down at a time, and the rest are riled, we might end up with a hostage situation on our hands."

Time is zooming by. Over the mic, Dick's voice says. "Yes, one for each of us. One for each of our immortal — and when I say immortal, I do mean Immortal — souls."

Don's about to step out but Jody grabs his arm. She says, "I don't like this."

She looks at all of them, and then back at the room where the hostages are being taken into the crowd, and then looks back at her impatiently.

Jody repeats, "Sam, I don't like this."

"Neither do we," Dean says. He moves to step forward but she grabs his arm this time and he says, "What?"

"But, those are people, right? Inhabited by Leviathans?"

Sam is watching the room, how people are being distributed out. He says, "Jody, we talked about this."

"Think about it, though."

"Look," Dean says. "That line used to be enough. But now...."

"Now?" Jody prompts, and it looks like she's ready to challenge him, like she knows what his answer is going to be and it's nothing he should be saying.

"Now," he says. "Now, it's just something you gotta get past. I mean, these are people. People. We stand by, they kill these people and stay inhabited, maybe not saveable. We take them down, at least the innocents live."

"They're all innocents," she hisses. "I know I should have thought of this before, but..." She looks out into the crowd and touches the gun at her belt. "Sam?"

He hesitates a second, but says, "Jody, sorry. It's too late for them."

When it comes down to it, that's their line.

 

 

It is a mass slaughter. They waste most of the Leviathans, with all the expected screaming and melting. The candles gutter out, so it's mostly dark. They lose Dick in the fray, maybe a few more. They know because the limo slides away, across the grass and back to the road. You cut your losses, Sam knows.

He finds the lights, and he and Dean hurry in Jody and Don to grab hostages who are shaking, and now covered in borax-based cleaning projects and and Leviathan goo. Now that all the Leviathans have been hosed down to nothing but remains, Jody is in police mode, calming the good citizens in ways Sam and Dean rarely manage, getting them untied and out of the tent, and into an orderly mob.

She and Don take them across the grass and disappear from sight, to a spot far down the road and point them in the direction of the town, a mile away. Once the two are in the far distance with the entire group, Dean heaves into a patch of weeds while Sam stands staring at his hands and the discarded hose that's since run out of solution. He's in a sopping, stinking shirt and pair of jeans, soaked through to his skin with stuff most of America probably uses to clean their counter tops. It's all terrible.

Dean finally straightens after a minute or two, and, spitting one more time into the grass, says, "Well."

"Burn it?" Sam asks, looking skeptically at the tent.

"Well, yeah."

They try to set it on fire — it has to be done, and done quickly — but borax must be some sort of flame retardant because the remains sputter before the flame sizzles out. They end up dumping huge contents of lighter fluid they have in the trunk and flinging a Zippo and making a run for it. The thing goes up in a whoosh.

The police are bound to find some strange goop amidst the melted canvas and overabundance of chemical residue from all the cleaning supplies, but with this much accelerant they've manage to start a fire that's unnaturally hot. There will be bones, of course. It will look like mass murder, and thank god they're not going to be caught, because that's what it is. There's no stepping around that.

They meet Jody and Don out on the road, and take off, back to the house. It's quiet save for Don saying, "It was necessary."

Dean says, "No argument there."

When they step into the house, a break in performed with a delicacy that speaks to how tense his brother is, Dean's movements economic as he picks the lock with the aid of Sam's flashlight app, Sam says, "You guys gonna—"

Jody says, "I think I need to treat myself to a fancy hotel type situation before I head home tomorrow. You know, modern shower and room service."

Don straightens his shirtsleeves and says, "I might just join you."

Standing in the living room, at eleven o'clock at night in a hollowed out house, there is the strange abruptness of a hunt being over. Whiskey's been drunk and business done. 

Jody smiles at Sam, and says, "I'll see you boys around."

When they part ways, no one tries to hug anyone, they just wave and say, "next time."

"Shower," Sam says and leaves Dean in the living room.

He heads into the master bedroom and goes through his stuff, grabbing his towel out of his bag, all by moonlight from the balcony door. The night is clear and cold and Sam hopes there's hot water when he steps into the bathroom, hopes tonight isn't the night the gas and electric shuts off. He prays for it almost like he's never prayed before, a silent gathering of all his conviction, like if he's ever deserved anything, god, let the payoff be now.

He feels delirious in his own head, expecting Lucifer but not finding him. It's dark like the tent, here, either too dark to see him or Sam is truly alone. He doesn't turn on the lights. Dean is probably resalting the windows, and Sam is just leaving him to it, no room for remorse. They're brothers. They were born to cut each other a break, that's their job.

There is hot water. It feels like the greatest epiphany against his hand. Sam drops his jacket on the counter and his jeans to the ground. He strips off his flannel and his t-shirt and his underwear and adjusts the water a little before stepping in, armed with shampoo and nothing else, covered in crap again, Leviathan goo and counter cleaner.

Sam has been vacillating between yeah I totally got this and fuck, I am not fine at all since the wall broke, but especially lately, since he'd let Lucifer in again and he could barely even think. And they killed hundreds of people tonight. If someone were to ask him now how he was, well. No one's going to ask him.

He's safe and alone until the door clicks open and Sam only notices because that's the fucked up way they were brought up, to recognize infinitesimally small sounds even with your head under the roar of a shower. He hasn't been able to really relax for years.

"Dean?" he tries.

There is a beat. "Who else, dude?"

Sam knows, then, that it's Lucifer. Not Dean, for the sole reason that he wants it to be. He makes peace with it quickly and pushes his hair back with both hands, breathing out through his nose, water fighting to enter in through his ears and mouth. 

Dean, the devil, neither of them says anything else. There's the sound of clothes rumpling to the floor and then the sliding door of the shower is opened and Dean steps in.

It's not like Lucifer hasn't tried this before. Sam keeps his eyes closed under the hot pulse of water and grabs for the shampoo.

"Dude, move out of the way," says Dean. "It's fucking cold out there."

He smells like chemicals and horribleness. He jabs Sam with a slippery elbow so he can get under the spray and Sam has to take a big step back, because it's Lucifer again, like in the Cage when he'd climbed into Sam's bunk wearing Dean's skin, and at the cliff, when he'd instilled a new sort of hope for two minutes and then dropped it over the edge.

Sam suds up his entire body three times and then his hair. Shower mist lands and cools on his shoulders and the back of his neck. His back is cold along the tile and his feet are getting pretty direct spray. He wonders about Jody. He hopes she isn't scarred forever. But there's not much worse than what's happened to her already, so it remains to be seen.

The water is a loud patter in the dark where it slaps against Dean's body. Otherwise, he is only just visible. Sam's eyes are adjusting, and the moon is hung somewhere out the small bathroom window. Dean reaches a hand up to the shelf and grabs the shampoo where Sam left it. When he moves away again, Sam steps under the water and washes the suds out of his own hair. He has to duck an inch to really get under there and for twenty seconds he is hot all over and coaxing soap out of his hair.

He sucks in a breath that is half air, half spray, when he feels Dean's body heat behind him. A hallucination fooling him, he reminds himself, imagined body heat where there's only cool air — the human brain is a wonder. He doesn't move, just lets water pulse over him and wash down to his knees, while Lucifer — Dean — moves in so that Sam's back is pressed up against a hot chest, the hint of whoever's dick it is slipping over Sam's ass. They stand there for a beat, another beat. Sam's experiencing sensory overload until he grabs the shampoo and washcloth and begins soaping up his front, ignoring it.

"That last day," says Dean. Lucifer. The voice is a shock that breaks through this dream Sam is calling real life. Sam feels water hit his closed eyelids and he listens. "That last day, before we went in. You were doing perimeter check and it was me and Bobby, in the van. He told me something."

It's like a myth, the way Dean's saying it. It feels back in their past and intractable. Sam experiences a full body shudder and Dean says close to his ear, normal voiced and at odds with their proximity, with the lights off, "He said, I had to find something to live for, said I had to get back in the game. I was walking dead and it would get me killed."

Sam knows that moment. He had been checking out the warehouse, watching people in lab coats accept shady looking shipments of meat, probably not up to health code, and when he'd loped back to the van, he had found Dean staring out the window, looking trapped and cranky, and Bobby mid-rant.

"So, what'd you say?"

"Don't remember," Dean says. "Probably wasn't worth remembering. What's important, is Bobby got all pissed and said something, something that really hit home."

"Yeah?"

"He told me to find something to live for. He said he didn't care if it was love or spite or a ten dollar bet, that if I died before him he'd kill me."

Sam feels a nose brushing the space between his shoulder blades. He feels a mouth press into his skin. Goosebumps peak up his arms and neck and Dean turns his face to rub stubble against Sam's shoulder, then the rough of his lips.

Sam keeps washing in nonsensical circles of washcloth, more for sensation than soap, with his eyes closed and Dean shifting against him until Dean says, "It was me, wasn't it?" His teeth skim Sam's skin. "Huh, Sammy? On the cliff. I've been doing some thinking."

Dean finally puts his hands on him, one at Sam's hip and one arm moving around and up Sam's chest to grip his shoulder and ease them closer together. 

"You were surprised, when you found out I was driving up, that day. I saw your face. It's been getting to me for months, driving me fucking crazy when I thought it couldn't get worse. Thinking how you were surprised, means you thought you were with me already. Doesn't take a genius."

Sam bites his lip around a moan as Dean bites down at his shoulder.

"Tell me we're alone," Dean whispers. "We're alone, aren't we? Sammy?"

"We're alone," Sam says. He turns and walks Dean back against the wall, leaning heavily on forearms bracketing Dean's head where it's knocked back. He leans their foreheads together and repeats it like a litany. "We're alone. We're alone, we're alone, we're alone."

This is nothing like kissing Dean before, at the edge of the cliff and cold as air, his brother pulled tight and scratchy against him. This Dean is both sure and uncertain, all wet and hot and sliding under his mouth. This thing is warm and tucked away secret in the dark of someone else's abandoned house.

"Am I better?" Dean asks, and crooks an arm around Sam's neck to slide their mouths together a fifth time. "Am I better than him? That fake me, that figment?"

It's all fast, controlled motions from there. Sam presses Dean up against the tile and gets his hands all over him. He drags his fingers up Dean's sides and then angles Dean's face so he can bite just under his ear, wet suction against skin while he nudges a knee between Dean's legs and presses in.

Dean fumbles for the shower door. It clicks open and cold air whooshes in. The skin of Dean's shoulders pebbles under Sam's fingers, and he pushes them out, grabbing a towel he'd left folded and wrapping it around Dean and shoving him into their room.

Dean goes easily, and when they reach the bed, there's no question. He crawls onto it, wet knees sinking into the sheets which are lain out open on the mattress. Dean kneels over him, warm everywhere and still wet, and kissing Sam's ear and coaxing the towel out of Sam's hand that he's still got wrapped around his waist on muscle memory.

 

 

They wake up to sunlight, Sam jerking back to reality, a leg hanging out of the covers in this musty bed of some foreclosed home in Wisconsin. His head is swimming and the sun is glaring and, when he finally dredges himself from the confusion of sleep, he sees by it that Dean is an arm's length away, mouth hanging open and his hair flattened on one side. 

He breathes in deep through his nose, watching. He flexes his fingers, until he finally allows himself to reach out, and traces over Dean's nose and then rubs his thumb along Dean's cheek.

Dean rolls toward him, frowning. He shoves his hand under his face and sighs. Sam touches his fingertip to the dip under Dean's lip and Dean's eyes flutter open.

His voice is a rasp when he says, "What are you doing?"

Sam doesn't answer for a time, and Dean waits, watching Sam's face while Sam traces along his cheek again, finally, saying, solemn, "Connect-the-dots." 

"All right, that does it." Dean rolls over onto him and holds him with body weight alone, shifting to press Sam fully down until Sam stops laughing and is taking full body breaths, instead, the type that fill up your soul until you're weightless. He plants both feet on the bed so that the sheets slip out from between them.

"Yeah?" Dean asks, and fits against him, making things certain.

Sam wraps his arms around Dean's shoulders. "Of course."

Dean reaches back and pulls the top sheet over them, and then dips in to press his mouth against Sam's in their tent of white light. Sam's palms slip against Dean's sides until he gets his hands on his ass. He thinks of their reasons. Their reasons for carrying on, thinks this has just cemented everything. He kisses Dean for every sound he makes against his mouth, for every hitched breath— 

"Ahem."

Sam jerks at the sound and gets an elbow to his armpit. They get entangled in the sheets for a hot minute then Dean manages to struggle to sitting, still astride Sam, knees sunk into the mattress on either side of Sam's hips, the sheet pooled around his waist. They both look up.

Crowley is seated in a rickety chair, glass of scotch in hand.

Sam makes an outraged "Wha—"

Dean says, "Oh my god. This is so—"

"Awkward?" Crowley supplies. "Oh please. Awkward is so two-thousand and...what is it again? Eleven. Yes. Two-thousand eleven."

"Crowley, what do you—"

Dean's grip tightens on his arm. "Sam!"

Sam looks, follows Dean's eyes and really looks. He sees something, in the empty chair. 

He almost can't bear to say it, because it's actually impossible. "Bobby?"

A gruff voice answers, "Who do you think it's been all this time?"

"What?"

The specter of Bobby flickers more into view, an ethereal sort of air about his puffy vest, and hat complete with hole in it and ghostly blood.

Dean jolts and Sam can feel it all through his body, as Dean says, "Drinking!"

"Bingo. Locked you in the car, too. Trying to write you a message on the window but my damn elbow slipped, and, welp. That was a barrel of laughs."

"We burned your bones," Sam says, mind racing. "Wait. Dean?" He looks at Dean which happens to be up, right over him. Dean looks down and then a second time, more lewdly, and Sam shoves him off. "It was the flask, wasn't it? That's why you kept it!"

Dean shrugs.

Bobby's spirit flickers and then comes back into focus. "That'd be why I'm still around."

"Chit chat later." They all turn to Crowley. "Thank you. Let me be plain: I want Dick. You've made some strides in that department," and here he gestures to them and Dean adjusts himself and Sam shoots him a look that says not now, my god and Dean rolls his eyes.

"As I was saying!" Crowley says. "Not the right sort of dick, and frankly it's pissing me off. I appreciate what you've done with the whole, killing off a large majority of their number, blah blah blah, but I'm after the big man himself.

"So, get me..." He pauses for effect, then pronounces, "Dick. Comprendo?"

And that's it, then. They yank their clothes on while Crowley and Bobby make small talk: socks, jeans, shirts, overshirts. Sam catches Dean's eye and Dean is still blushing.

They head downstairs to the kitchen.

"I for one, am surprised," Lucifer starts.

Sam ignores him. He doesn't care what Lucifer's surprised about or sure of.

Lucifer snorts. "Thankless, I swear. Well, Sammy. I'm gonna make myself a PB&J. You do whatever the hell it is you're set on doing this time."

They make sandwiches with whatever supplies they have, and Dean pours out drinks — three beers and one scotch — the four of them hanging in the kitchen like any Saturday morning could be, in some other world where there are no monsters, one Sam has given up on imagining by now and only sees that world on TV or in movies.

"Sammy," Lucifer says, messing with the bread. "Where's the peanut butter?" 

Sam lets his eyes pass right through him as he sips his beer and idles with his other hand in the pocket of his jeans.

Dean catches Sam's elbow as he passes, an easy rub of his thumb over Sam's inner arm like it's second-nature. Sam thinks this might be stone three, and building. Then, Dean's past, grabbing the American cheese off the counter, telling Bobby, "Your insides look like your outsides, now, man. How do you feel?"

"How do you think I feel?" Bobby retorts with a ghastly eyeroll. "Don't feel a goddamn thing and it's the best I've felt in years.'

Crowley watches him fondly, if that's at all possible, and Lucifer makes a mess of the cupboards.

"Peanut butter," Lucifer demands, loudly and for the sixty-sixth time, and Sam just blithely ignores him in favor of going to stand next to his brother, who is applying himself to stripping the cheese of its plastic to leave in a heap that a slight breeze could blow away.

Sam knocks their shoulders together and Dean runs a hand down Sam's arm again, pulling shivers from Sam's skin. He touches his palm with a light brush of fingertips and Sam curls their pinkies together and holds.

"This is the cheesiest thing we've ever done," Dean avows, while that ruckus goes on behind them. He says it low, like it's a secret and as if a ghost and the king of hell and the devil aren't part and party to it, and Sam snickers and stays put. He's got a happy buzz that is complicated in all the right ways. He thinks, it's not end of days, it's just the middle.

Behind them, Lucifer's getting louder. "Where in the Hell does one hide the peanut butter around here?"

Sam hears Crowley sigh and say, "Oh, for the love of— Top shelf, mate."

Sam, Dean, Bobby, and Lucifer turn as one and say, "What?"

Crowley shakes his head. "Angels. Needy buggers."


End file.
